The Big Misdirect
by Cormac Jeswinnet
Summary: When a fool has a message for you, you ought to listen carefully. This is a lesson Dylan still has to learn. And with the lies piling up, and conspiracy aiming to strike at the heart of the Horsemen, better hope he picks it up soon. - Now, finally, COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

It begins gently, insidiously, so you'd hardly notice. Dylan, for instance, Dylan hardly notices. He's got more on his mind; on his way to a meet, he's focused on making himself go unnoticed. Because it's not a good idea, you know, all of them meeting up at once. Even here in Paris, a continent and an ocean from arrest warrants, it's not a good idea. But it's what you do, isn't it? When a man's evil twin gets out of prison after less than a year – 'technicalities' have been mentioned, so has 'good behavior', though 'hypnotism' has come up more often – it's what you do. You rally round. You buy drinks.

You've got more on your mind and you don't notice it beginning. Soft-soled steps sync up with yours and as long as they stay in sync you don't notice.

That humming on the next street over, parallel with you, you catch little snatches of it where alleys connect the two paths, but it slides over your consciousness, over these more important considerations. Busy keeping his head down, busy keeping an eye on everybody he might pass, busy watching the reflections in wing mirrors and store windows, it slides over Dylan. Well, there's once, one particular phrase, that makes him shudder. Not his favorite tune, see. Bad memories associated with that tune. Fearful, childish, a momentary hollowing of the stomach before he reminds himself, he's a grown-up now. And he's got other things to think about.

But that first shudder sticks. Though he can will the knot out of his gut like any other bout of nerves, the discomfort is with him now. Itchy on the back of his neck, tense between his shoulder blades. Once you hear it, it sticks. Once you suspect there's somebody behind you, you have to look.

Of course, it's ridiculous. Idiotic. A couple of notes, an awful remembrance, he's letting it get to him. Childish. Good thing he insisted on everybody travelling alone to the meet; nobody's here to see their brave and fearless leader not looking so fearless anymore. Darting eyes, looking for a reflection that will show the street behind him, refusing to turn around and just look, because that would be admitting it. His mouth is dry, his palms sweat, but until he has to whip around and see for himself, Dylan doesn't have to admit that he's afraid.

You hear that music everywhere. Movies, cartoons, advertising, you hear it playing in calliope plink-plonk out of wind-up toys. Originally classical, _The Entrance Of The Gladiators_ , but it's not associated with anything like a gladiator anymore. Nothing so brave and noble as a gladiator…

He still remembers it playing, sharp and ragged as the edge of an opened can, eking out of speakers hidden in the folds of big top curtains.

It's not until he stumbles, turns a corner into a civilian, somebody he didn't see or hear or feel coming, could have been anything, that he stops fighting. A mumbled apology to the local and he stops a moment. His back to a cold brick wall and one deep breath, he tells himself, "Enough." Dylan closes his eyes for a second. Bracing himself, that's how he thinks of it, but then he thinks of _them_ , reaching out for him, silent in the dark, their grins glowing beyond their grasping hands, and with a single, strangled bark of fear his eyes flash open again. In the same heartbeat, before his resolve can fade, he leans out around the corner.

And there's nothing. Nobody following him. Not so much as the echo of a footstep, nobody disappearing into an alleyway. Nothing.

Of course there isn't. Stupid of him. Some unknown other hums one little kid's tune and he went off.

Of course there's nothing.

He turns back, rests against the solidity of the wall again. Somehow, the world itself gets more solid. It's as if he'd been dizzy and not noticed that either. Now he's got his feet back again, and a definite sense of the physical world, the weights of objects and distances to them, understanding the timing of echoes. A car prowls by in another street and the swish of tires on tar still wet from the afternoon's rain does not startle him, because he heard it coming. Dylan's appreciation of his surroundings is of a sort useful to both magicians and fugitives; aware of unadulterated, unfiltered, unemotional reality. Aware of how to make all that vibrating space say what he wants it to.

He is as grateful for it now, having lost it for a second, as a monk is for a miracle when his faith has faltered. This time when his eyes close, he lets them stay that way for a second. Giving thanks, and letting the fear drain. Then he straightens up, tugs his collar up, and turns to start on again. Meeting up is dangerous enough without Dylan drawing attention to himself on street corners.

Step by step, he talks himself out of it. One step, two _, you're an idiot._ Three, four _, jumping at shadows._ Five steps, and six _, if you ever do that again you have to tell everybody all about it._

Seven, eight, nine steps, the mouth of another winding alley yawns dark a few feet ahead of him.

He glances at the window of the store across the street. In the black reflection, smears of ghost white. In the white, eyes, and the eyes are on him, watching him watch, waiting for him to arrive. For one tick of the clock there is poise and painful recognition between the two parties. The tick after that, Dylan is choking on his heart again, breathless. He drops a step back and they, _them_ , those _creatures_ who have hunted him down, bad memories, they drop out of the alley, one over the other, tumbling and stumbling but somehow always on their feet.

They come with glowing grins behind grasping hands, mock-marching one behind the other. The first is small, and singing that damn music right up loud now that they're out in the open. The other follows, accompanying on a kazoo. That second seems to lumber, but the movements are too careful and precise to belong to any movie monster. They practice, you know. They think it's an art, these evil terrors. They think they rehearse like any other performer.

They come on still singing, driving Dylan step-by-step back the way he came. He bites down hard on the urge to turn and run. That's what they want.

To fight the terror, he forces himself to look at them, and to assess. The little one, for instance, might be male or female, it's hard to tell – it wears baggy shorts that fall below the knee, heavy boots, a jacket over a sweater over plaid over an ill-fitting shirt. The bigger one is definitely male, in faded, threadbare jeans and a grubby white long-sleeve. Untraditional. But it's not the costumes that worry him. Those clothes could belong to anybody. It's only in combination with the faces that they become dangerous.

Greasepaint. Black lips on the little one, extended to the cheekbones, and mismatched eyes, blue and yellow ringed around and slashed through. Red diamonds following the arch of one eyebrow. Lantern-like shadows beneath the bigger ones eyes, drawn down the blank white expanse towards the jaw in twin tears.

But they haven't attacked yet. And they don't seem to be armed – their type prefers weapons which are difficult to hide. Slapsticks and rubber chickens are difficult to fit in a concealed pocket. These things are in Dylan's favor. All this pair seem to want to do is sing.

And so, the initial adrenaline, the urge to flee, fading, he forces himself to stop. Forces a look of bland unconcern into his features.

 _Look unimpressed_. Another magician told him that once. _If you want to take the power out of_ any _performer, look unimpressed. Especially them. They don't exist if you're not impressed_.

Terrified, Dylan always assumed, counted as a kind of impressed.

When he stops, they stop. When they stop, he questions his decision to stop at all. Something about the timing is too perfect. It has given them a streetlamp spotlight, so they glow Halloween-orange. At that moment too, they come to the end of their music, and present themselves with open arms and even wider grins.

Do they expect applause? Should he give it to them? There's 'looking unimpressed' and then there's 'wilfully provoking'.

Dylan hesitates too long. They give up, and drop for a moment in parody disappointment, swinging arms, shrugging at each other, pouting.

Then, with the same uncanny, light-switch speed, they are alert and alive again, grinning and bouncing. The little one steps slightly forward and declares, in broad, nasal New Jersey, "Salutations, Mister Man!" Indicating itself, "My name is Quinn, and this is Petey, playing the kazoo very badly and off-key. It's not his fault – you need a tongue to do it properly."

The big one hangs its jaw down. A moment too late, Dylan realizes what he's being shown and pulls away, arm raised to his eyes, "I don't need to see that…"

"Well, okay, but-" And that nimbler of the two, darting creature, like a spider running from repeated slams of a show, is trying to get in front of him, under his shielding arm, into his vision again, "Anyway, like I was saying," and it _touches_ him, he feels the peak of its baseball cap, the cushion of the hood pulled up over it, press under his arm, and jumps back. Because this leaves him staring directly at the little monster, it can continue, "We represent-"

"I know who you represent," Dylan growls. Trying to stand forward, to assert himself, "And the answer's no."

" _Hey_!"

He will never, not in any telling of this story, however honest he feels, however drunk he may be, admit that he flinched. The fool is five feet high, if that. But it yelled, and here in the moment we will be honest and say that Dylan flinches.

He flinches harder when it storms up – feet turned out, there is ballet and strange art in the simplest of their motions – and jabs a stubby finger into his chest, "I _like_ my introduction! And you skipped it! And you didn't just skip my introduction, you skipped my question! And you answered it not even knowing what it is!" Dylan backs away from the still-stabbing finger and straight into the powerful chest of the larger companion.

These monsters, to a man, have the arms of elite gymnasts. One glance at Petey's and Dylan envisages bear hugs. He skitters sideways, out where he can hold them both at arm's length.

The little one, with its eyes now burning in their multi-coloured pits, says more determinedly, " _We – represent –"_

"I know who you represent!"

Oh, God, he didn't mean to yell this time. That had nothing to do with asserting himself, everything to do with not wanting to hear it stated out loud, who they represent. He's in trouble this time. They'll kill him this time, for sure.

But instead the little one throws up its hands, only the fingertips showing under its dragging cuffs, and turns to its friend, " _You_ talk to him!"

Petey makes an extravagant show of panic. Creeps forward like a child shoved on stage. He opens his tongueless maw as if words might spontaneously leave him, closes it, opens it again, closes it. Raising his hands, his fingers form strange shapes. Dylan doesn't follow the first time, so he repeats. Letters; the shapes are letters – joined thumbs and tented forefingers – A, one forefinger hanging from the other thumb, S, and, held to his forehead in that grand high tradition of the 1990s, the basic L.

ASL.

"Nah, sorry," Dylan says.

Petey shrugs, grabs Quinn by the arm and shoves it back forward. Grudging, bouncing one foot like a sulking teenager, it groans. Mimics his yelling, " _You know who we represent!_ "

 _Be nice_ , Dylan tells himself. Then he ignores the voice in the back of his head which goes on to tell him they'll tear him limb from limb, drag him into the alley, eat the flesh from his bones like fried chicken, except for his face, because they leave that intact, they leave your whole head, but they put a brightly coloured wig on it and paint your face, and that's all anybody ever finds. Ignoring that, wholeheartedly, he says in the nicest and most reasonable voice he has, "I do."

Quinn appreciates the effort. He can see that in how it bobs its head, how it finds some of the ceremony it _wanted_ to present in the first place. This, he realizes now, is just an underling. It's nothing compared to the monsters that send it. It believes it is a messenger, an emissary between great tribes. He should be kinder…

"We would respectfully request," it tries, "on _their_ behalf, that you come and visit them. There is something you need to know, but they have to tell you in person. They wouldn't let Petey and me deliver the message."

A part of Dylan which will forever be six years old screams, _It's a trap!_ And the rest, however grown-up and responsible it may be, however dependable and strong, however his character has crystallized in all those intervening years, shakes his head blindly, speechless. At the very notion of going among these lunatics, walking voluntarily into hell, he turns his back on them, throws up his hood and continues on his way along the street. It's what he always should have done. Walked around them, walked past them, walked on, kept walking, just walked away, away from them, anywhere but them, no, no, he won't go and visit, they can't make him.

"Please?!" the one named Quinn yells after him.

 _Unimpressed_ , he tells himself. _No reaction. Stoic._

So the yell comes again. "It's about your Horsemen!"

Now he pauses. Less because he's listening than because it's very loud and very public. Different instincts roar up stronger than fear – protective, raging, ready to fight. They last for all of a second when he looks back. They're arguing; Petey holding a finger to his painted lips, begging Quinn to be quiet, and when Quinn stammers back he holds out his hands, together at the wrists, miming handcuffs.

The very mention of police, even silently, and they both jump up straight and stiff, hands up. Dylan turns the corner listening to, "Honest ta Gawd, Offisah, I was home in mah bed!"

He's not running. It's important to Dylan that it be stated, he is not running. He lost time, that's all. They made him late. So he's walking quicker. But he's definitely not running away.


	2. Chapter 2

Less experienced or intelligent fugitives are prone to the mistaken belief that they must find a hiding place where they are entirely unknown. Experience and intelligence quickly realize what's wrong with that.

Where nobody knows you, you necessarily know nobody. And amongst all those coming and going people and the passers-by, whom you do not know and can't keep track of, whose ways and habits are unfamiliar to you and, therefore, you've got no way of spotting when something is wrong, anybody at all might recognize your face. This is trouble enough in itself. Then you consider how much room it creates for paranoia and you start to see just how many problems you create for yourself, when you decide you want to go where nobody knows your name.

It hardly seems coincidence, then, that Dylan turns off the street, through a door little different to any other between the shut-up night time stores, that the sign he passes under reads, _Santé._

His advice, to all those accused wrongfully (or at least unjustly – there's no denying he and his have taken the odd liberty with the law) and forced to run, find a new familiarity. Find friendly parties who will offer shelter and, ideally, reasonably priced scotch. Find a spot where the bartender watches the front door and knows the score when it comes to letting you out the back. It helps if there's an extensive and global operation watching your back. There's some argument amongst the Horsemen, who have moved on and forgotten and are too grateful for the safety of this little basement bar to question it too deeply, about whether Danny found the matchbook that brought them here first or the matchbook found him.

In essence, it's only this – find a new comfort zone. Find it for nights like tonight when, all these practical and legal considerations to one side, forgetting the trapdoor in the back room down the sewers and the mirror over the bar showing the stairs to the street, Dylan just needs the comfort.

The booth at the end is shielded by the bar and, on busier nights, the cluster around the pool table and the TV mounted above it. But because this night has been nothing if not unhelpful, it isn't busy. No cluster. Dylan can see Danny and Merritt already waiting from the turn of the staircase. And they can see him too, can lean out tapping watches, swaying heads, mock-disappointed… _Mock_ – those pantomime looks on their faces raise the echo of an all-too-recent shudder up Dylan's spine.

"Don't mind me," Merritt calls, just as soon as he's within earshot. "It's cool that you're running behind. Fashionably late. I respect that, in light of your refusal to be fashionable in any other way. Don't you waste one fashionable thought on me, friend. I'm not suffering any psychological distress arising from my current familial situation whatsoever-" Judging by the length of his S-sounds and the forced eloquence, these heartaches are already well on their way to numb. Nonetheless the rant goes on even while Dylan is stopped at the bar. "You take care of yourself. I wouldn't want to left alone with Danny for any length of time either, oh, wait, I have been, how terrible for me. Don't let that bother you, though. No, no, I'm sure you had important things t-"

So on, so forth. And maybe it's hypnotism or maybe the guilt Dylan starts to feel is real, but he lets it continue, because it is loud and harmless, and it covers up the dire warnings he mumbles to the barman, covers the ugly pause while he struggles to find the word in French for something he doesn't like to name in English, something he doesn't like to even think about… " _Deux… bouffon? Comprends?_ Uh… what's the damn word _…_ Shit, it's just _clown,_ isn't it…" That's it; he knows it because his heart skips when he says it. And because the bartender stares at him like that couldn't possibly be what he meant. " _Je sais, oui, je sais, mais_ … _tu se fais la guet de… les… clowns_ …?" His warning concluded, the perplexed stare goes on. Whether it's the subject matter of just his French, Dylan doesn't know anymore. The bartender sets the round in front of him, each of the three glasses in clunking turn. The suggestion is very much that Dylan needs all of them. "You know what?" he says, before he can admit that he agrees, "Forget about it."

He picks up the glasses – and hears them clink together. Everything has gone very quiet behind him. Merritt's solo raving has dropped into a hissing duet, and with a colleague at the other end of the bar the bartender is hissing too. Dylan sighs. He carries the drinks around the pool table and, before he can even set them down.

"Clowns?" Danny says. Dylan doesn't like the sharpness of it, the speed with which he reaches across for his drink. "Is… Is that what you said? Were you just talking about clowns?"

 _Stop talking about them!_ , but Dylan bites his tongue, "It's not important."

"No, please," and there's that speed again, those clipped little syllables which are supposed to sound harsh, even angry. All too often they mean fear, nerves. "Please, I want to talk about clowns."

"You're late because of _clowns_?" Merritt mumbles, those few drunken seconds behind the rest of the conversation.

Glass half-emptied at a swallow, Danny bites, "I want to talk about _anything_ but this."

"At the moment of my greatest personal darkness since the last great personal darkness induced by my brother, did you go to the circus, oh great and fearless leader?"

"I was not at the circ- Danny, how many has he had?"

A shrug, a helpless, flopping hand, "I found him like this. Me, by the way, just me. I'm the only one who's heard about the great personal darkness already. Several times."

"Where's Lula? And Ja- Never mind, I just answered my own question…"

That's the moment Dylan accepts, he's on his own with this one. Help isn't coming. Atlas has never been any good with feelings other than his own (with which he is even worse) and who knows when the other two will show up. No, despite his own still-fading distress, it's time to step up, to accept that sarcastic mantel of 'brave and fearless leader' and do something. That's it. That's what's required of him. No point to argue. Nothing to it but to do it.

If only he knew what to do.

The moment he turns his attention to Merritt, the accusation comes, "Was it at least a good circus?"

"I wasn't at a circus," and because this seems to make some sort of impact, "I promise, hand on my heart, I really wasn't. Did… Did you hear any more about this techni _-_?"

" _Technicality, my ass_!" Merritt bawls, the sudden venom and volume such that Dylan draws back. At the edge of his vision, Danny's glass flashes up and comes down again empty, comes down clacking hard. The topic of technicalities must have been covered already, along with great personal darknesses. " _How_ he got the DA to visit him in the first place is beyond me but I don't think anybody here gets any prizes for guessing what happened when he did. And _suddenly_ this wonderful, upright lawman digs up some teeny little piece of planted evidence in some ancient and unrelated case and then he's –" and here Merritt slides out of his usual impression of erudition and into preadolescence, a high-pitched and mocking voice, convulsive little hand motions up around his face, picking the air apart to show how petty he thinks it all is, and perhaps how he'd just like to tear it apart, " – _no longer credible_ and _certain cases no longer hold up_ and blah-blah-blah! Technicality? Technically stupid you think there was any technicalities involved, all very simple, you ask me."

Merritt trails off muttering. Dylan edges around the booth to put his elbow hard in Danny's ribs. "Help."

"No."

"Help me, or I will let Lula saw you in half. And you saw that special she did with the second rabb-"

"Why are you letting this get to you?" says Danny, sitting forward with a sudden surge of compassion. "You're thousands of miles away, you're part of something bigger. You've got purpose." A flicker of recognition, far away behind the tearful fug in Merritt's eyes; the slightest suggestion that this might work. They might be getting through. The right word now and this excruciating early part of the night might be over.

The wrong one, "And besides, everybody knows what he did, right? So he's not in prison, so what?", and the flicker dies like a snuffed candle. It is subsumed by more powerful fire, bright and raging. The gaze is turned inward, directed at some awful memory. Merritt had been sinking closer and closer to the table, and might have sunk entirely into his own mire. That at least would have meant he'd shut up. But now he rises monstrous, something from the deep wakened by sacrifice or the smell of blood.

"So what?" This new beginning is soft. Dylan's first instinct is gratitude, relief. But instinct dies when it hears the danger inherent in the near whisper. "So what? Because he's getting away with it, is what!"

 _Whatever you do_ , Dylan tells himself, _definitely don't grab the hat clean off his head and stuff his mouth with it._

And Danny pleads, "Please don't tell me about the school talent show again." To Dylan, "He's done it twice already, I don't know if he forgets or he just doesn't care, but-"

"Getting away with it. Like he always does. Ever since we were seven years old, that was the first time. Before that we were friends. It was at the age of seven it all started to go wrong. I never even wanted to enter that damn show but… well, it was compulsory so-"

Danny stands. He doesn't wait for Dylan to move but presses out right past him. The table is so violently rattled drinks splatter out of glasses. "Where are you going?"

"Tell Lula I'll bring my own chainsaw."

Dylan almost grabs for the back of his shirt. But he catches himself. That would be a brutal, cruel sort of desperation. It's okay. Let Merritt rant. Something like this would bother anybody. Let him get it out of his system. By the time the alcohol has done the same, he'll be back to himself again. Yes, Dylan decides, that's the key to this; just let him talk. Nod, grimace, maybe pat an arm until, like a toddler throwing a tantrum, Merritt wears himself out and needs a nap. Inebriation plus aggravation plus the emotional exhaustion, Dylan gives it an hour tops.

He'll be fine for an hour, right? With the wellbeing of one of his own at stake?

Ten minutes go by. Fifteen, and Merritt goes into another telling of the talent show story. Twenty and the odd stray, unwanted thought of possibly strangling J Daniel Atlas to death somewhere over by the stairwell, maybe using the edge of the jukebox, getting that right in his windpipe, something along those lines, starts to creep in. Where did Danny go, anyway? He didn't leave. Dylan's got enough of the back-bar mirror in his periphery to have seen anyone go up or down the stairs. So the next time Merritt gets lost staring into the bottom of his glass – which Dylan does not intend to see filled again – he risks a glance away around the room.

And there he is, looking riper and more ready for strangling than he ever has, feigning ever-so-genuine interest in some blonde at the far end of the bar.

But he stares too long. Merritt notices. Similar failures of attention have been punished, so far, with repeats of the talent show story. Dylan winces, braces himself… and nothing happens.

He slides his eyes sideways to find Merritt staring the same way. Something more interesting than his personal darkness, it seems, has arisen. Peering and squinting, probably trying to align the two images of his double vision into one, he picks up his empty glass and looks through it like a telescope. "Couldn't be…" Dropping the glass into his palm he studies it carefully, "I must have had too many of these."

"I won't argue with that, but what is it about this sickening display that clued you in?"

"Isn't that Rebecca?"

For the longest time, Dylan flounders. The name is familiar, but only in a distant way. Rebecca is a friend of a friend or an overheard story. And to ask Merritt could be to invite the floodgates to open right back up. The mood and the state he's in, Rebecca could have been Merritt's third grade girlfriend. Given the theme of tonight's other stories, she probably went on to become Chase's third grade girlfriend. But Merritt keeps squinting, keeps staring. It doesn't take long for curiosity to overpower fear.

"Who's Rebecca?"


	3. Chapter 3

Danny got as far as the steps out back. They crook up from the basement door to the street. He was halfway there. Eight concrete steps further, he would have been gone. But at that halfway point the extractor fan from the bar's basic kitchen billowed steam into the storm-threatened night, creating a cloud, a veil of mystery. To cross through it was too much like vanishing on stage. Disappearing. That was when the guilt kicked in.

And so he turned, and he came back. Rather than come in the way he left, through the kitchen door, where Dylan would see and know that he made a real attempt to escape, he hitched up through the window of the men's room. There, for a little while longer, he questioned his decision, almost climbed back out again, held a brief conference with himself on the nature of guilt as a means of social control which he really ought to have gotten over by now, after so many years of awareness and using it against other people, concluded that he was right about that, that it was a very intelligent conclusion to have reached, that really, truly, he was above this sort of easy psychic manipulation…

Then he opened the door to go buy his round and return again to the table. He had just one nerve that wasn't quite worn through just yet. It would hold out long enough to let Dylan take a break.

But he never got any farther along that particular plan than opening the door. When he opened the door, that was when he saw her.

To answer Merritt's question, yes, it's Rebecca.

To answer Dylan's, Rebecca is one of those bad memories that seem to be springing up everywhere tonight.

Or maybe that's an unfair generalization. As an idea and a concept, as a presence, a thing that used to happen, the notion of Rebecca Dasko in her entirety encompasses years. She was his assistant, after all; they saw a lot of each other. They were close. It couldn't have been all bad, if they were so close. Upon examination, she turns out to be made of a million different threads, each of which was as clear and powerful to Danny in that first moment he set eyes on her as it was when it was new. The visuals alone were overwhelming – the flash of a sequinned hip, a rhinestone heel. Fine fingers cutting a deck, or cutting through a wing of hair falling forward, hooking it back behind an ear. The exact shade of her eyes, and of the freckles on the narrow shoulders, those ones a spotlight erases but you see them rehearsing, you see them up close. You see, and you worry about, the weird twist of her left foot in certain kinds of turn, it panics you, how that could blow a trick somehow, even if you can't figure out how that would be, it matters, that twist, and you keep pointing it out and pointing it out and you come up with real and practical measures that might fix it and then the sighing and the pouting and…

Maybe what Danny means, when he calls her a bad memory, is that no matter how well he might start out thinking of Rebecca, he never finishes up that way.

Maybe, when he thinks of her, there's one memory which subsumes and steps on all others. And that one, very much, no shadow of a doubt, is bad.

Danny and Rebecca did not part well. And the trouble with a bad finale is that it's all you take away with you. It's all you hold in your mind through all the time apart. It's all you bring back with you, when you meet again for the next show. If it had been Danny's own decision, he would have changed his plans again, would have let himself be driven back through the door he hadn't yet stepped out of, back to the window, back into the night and this time through the veil of steam in a vanishing act that any master might be proud of.

It would have been guilt that drove him. Social construct or not, when something grabs a breath out of your lungs and the rational thought out of your head, you have to admit it holds some power over you. During that initial icy clutch, he could have run, it was perfectly possible.

The second it passed, so did the opportunity. Like a computer rebooting, Danny got his thinking back in line. He looked at her again and saw _now_ instead of then. And there is way too much wrong with this scene to walk away from. Consider the years past since he's seen her, to begin with. Why now? And why here, why should she, or anybody else for that matter, be here? _Danny_ shouldn't even be here. Consider her leaning on the end of the bar, one twisting ankle tucked behind the other, holding her martini glass in such a way that she can pretend to be lost in the reflections on the surface and glance at her watch magnified through the bowl. Too obviously waiting.

Add to that the fact that, until their first international show together, in Amsterdam, Rebecca never even owned a passport. Doesn't that make it doubtful she's come to Paris for the culture or the art, for the macarons?

Just Danny on his own, he would have run. But he's got other people to think of these days.

First he tried to walk past her. Despite his moment's hesitation in the doorway – and really, all of this contemplation took no more than a moment – he felt he made a good job of it, missed her entirely, 'distracted' by the flare of a lighter at a table in the corner. That lighter was good luck. But fate, determined for once to be even-handed, gave the same to her; as Danny passed the jukebox, the record stuck. Even if she'd already seen him, in the back bar, in the side of her glass, in the face of her watch, she looked round then.

"Danny?" Supposed to be tentative, fake or not, too soft to be heard if he hadn't been listening. He took another step and let her repeat out loud, "Danny."

 _Played that all wrong_ , he would have told her, if this was still his trick and not hers, if it was his place to say, _There was absolutely zero-doubt, the way you said that. All this time, if you weren't expecting me, on entirely the wrong continent, no, no way, Rebecca, blew it, sorry._

He turned, and tried to feign a second of trying to place her. She _has_ actually changed. Not those high sharp cheekbones anymore, not those lean arms. She has – and this is something Danny has learned to phrase carefully – _curved out_ , somewhat. Once he moved past the dozen or so trapdoor-based quips that sprang immediately to mind, he found it suits her. He repurposed that disjunct to make himself look blank and remembering when the truth was he knew her at a glance.

Mock recognition covered him for the step or two he had to backtrack. He leaned across from her, the other side of the corner. "Rebecca… I…-"

Rebecca began to laugh before he could find a sentence he wanted to stumble through. "I don't think either of us is dumb enough for the chance-meeting thing."

"Oh, thank God…"

"You're so full of shit; why'd you pretend to walk past me if you didn't think that's what I was trying?"

"I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Come on, imagine if one of us _was_ that dumb, how heart-broken would we have been if I'd just, say, grabbed you by the arm and pulled you outside away from here and, I don't know, demanded to know what it is you want and how you found us."

A tip of her head, eyes huge with innocence, "' _Us'_?" He kicked himself, another ugly blank moment, before he really thought about it. Another hesitation, another moment that he handed to her on a platter, and her laugh was all victory, "You were never this easy. Have you had a drink already?"

"You know I have. You've been watching."

It was about then that she dropped her act. Every scrap of it, every shred, they blew away like ashes and left her smug and him defeated. "I got here before you. Merritt was already here though – "

"Yeah, we don't really know how long he's-"

"I have to say, I almost went over there. He looks pretty depressed."

"His brother's –" She wouldn't even grace him with 'I know', just held up her phone to show she'd been following the proud, glowing commentary of Chase McKinney's Twitter feed. "Yeah. That."

She sighed at him, then. She pouted. And by those two minute flickers of her personality she brought back the day he told her he was skimming down the act, going up close, public, or in short, that he no longer required any lady to saw in half. She brings back the way she lingered, clung, tried to carve a place for herself in too-hard rock. It was never meant to get cruel, should have been cold, businesslike, but it takes two to do business. It only takes one to make the other fear for the pet rabbits, recoil from the sight of an unexpected pot boiling. But at that point she still hadn't told him anything except how clever she thought she'd been. He has had to sit and endure it, the coquetry (did she think because this was Paris she could pull that off?) the hair-tossing, _God_ … "Honestly, Daniel, you've always been such an awful loser. Accept that I beat you."

"I still need to know what you're doing here."

"Accept that I beat you and I'll tell you."

This is an assistant thing. Danny doesn't understand it but it happened with Henley and it happened, _multiple times_ , with Rebecca. This is just the latest in a series of arbitrary admissions she's felt the need to force from him, it's the social aspect again, the need to hold him hostage, this nugatory concept of 'winning' and… And this could affect the four others as well as himself. Danny briefly squeezes his eyes shut. "You beat me."

"Damn right I did." She drained her glass then. Saying nothing, and certainly not the promised explanation, she leaned back on her elbow. Like _she_ was the one waiting. When she flicked her eyes down at the empty glass he understood and signalled the bartender.

Two fresh glasses. He raised his to drink, balancing the dangers of fugging his mind still further with the potential bracing effect, only to have her stop him. She kept it from him until she had touched her own glass against it. "I just came to congratulate you, Danny. Really. Nothing to be scared of. I was only playing with you just now, and only for the sake of playing. That little look on your face, it's _adorable_. No, really-really. I just came to say, well done. You really did make the big time, didn't you? I mean, sneaking around, living in hiding, taking your orders from some freak on a vengeance trip…"

He could have kissed her then. Here, finally, was something that made sense. Here was something that fit her character. Here was something he could assign away to bad memory and close the door on.

"…I didn't _deliberately_ hunt you down. You know the old forums, those same people who talk and talk and only very occasionally seem to know something. You start getting the same hints coming through over and over, y'know? I thought to myself, if I find him, I'll congratulate him, and if I don't, hey, I'll do some shopping. So," and she shrugged, "Y'know?" Another shrug, "Congratulations. To the great J. Daniel Atlas. And his incredible life of fame and fortune he always wanted, and to hell with everybody he had to leave in the dirt along the way."

To say that hit a nerve would be to give her too much credit. She's working off outdated information, taunting him with things he no longer wants… much. But it was a near-enough miss. Jaw tight, breathing harder than he wanted to, "I just remembered, I hate you."

Rebecca grinned, _"Yeah_ you do." Turning back to the bar, hanging over her glass, "So how's Henley these days? There's word on all the rest of you but nothing about her." He would have told her to leave except, "Do you like Paris? I don't, so far. Don't you think it's kind of cold? The people I mean, not the weather."

"Well, they don't like tourists." He didn't know why he was speaking. The tone of her voice, what she said, it was conversational, yes. But Danny couldn't say why he took up the invitation. "You scream tourist. If you ditch the combination of sensible shoes with a Prada bag and learn to pronounce _s'il vous plait_ correctly, you might get a better reception."

And they've been talking in much that same manner, needling but enduring each other, ever since. There's talent in this, holding him captive. If only she'd exhibited anything similar when he needed her to act on stage, things might not be this way.

That's the conversation Merritt and Dylan are watching. They're talking about Paris, and nothing else.

So when a text cuts across the bar from Dylan's phone to Danny's, and very simply asks – _Trouble?_ , his reply is just as succinct.

 _X 10_


	4. Chapter 4

It never had to be Paris. When running brought them here, Dylan cited factitious connections, mentioned the famously lackadaisical attitude of the French authorities to non-terrorist extradition requests. He hinted at orders from on high, without ever actually saying whether there were any, because there weren't. The idea that there _could_ have been was more powerful and, therefore, more important.

The trick is to accentuate the positive. Don't let anybody think too hard about the obscure Malaysian islands that might have sheltered them; those have bad wifi, satellite phones, not secure. Bad idea. Switzerland may be treaty-free, but they're getting more and more cooperative these days and besides, Switzerland is cold. The corrupt-yet-sun-drenched criminal enclaves of the Riviera may be friendly, easily manipulated and full of ripe targets but… Well, truth be known, Dylan had trouble refuting that one when Merritt suggested it. In fact, now, climbing to his own front door in the encore of this afternoon's storm soaked to the skin, he really can't remember what he said to convince the others they ought not go live a lot nearer the equator.

But, and this is the point he's really keen to make here, convince them he did. Ask any other Horseman and they will tell you, unquestioningly, it had to be Paris. They'll say it like there's no other city in the world where they might be so safe and content as Paris.

How? Four highly intelligent and effective individuals who not only know intimately, _instinctually_ , exactly how these sorts of mind games work, but who employ them on an almost-daily basis, how did Dylan manage to sell them the line? Simple; for him, it's the truth. There is no city in the world where he might be so safe and content as Paris.

He finds the single anchoring reason why in a fourth floor apartment that smells like gun oil and garlic frying, and like burying his nose in her hair. Amazing how that scent makes the whole too-long night go away. All of it – the unnerving interlude that began it, those monsters in the alley, through all Merritt's wailing, the sinking weight of this new trouble that kept Danny so distracted all night – it all vanishes. Everything between this moment of arriving back to the moment he left recedes the way a city will when you take the train away from it. It's the closest thing to true magic, to witchcraft, that he's ever known. And maybe that's romanticizing it but Dylan could care less and anyway this, as he went to such pains to ensure, is Paris. If you can't romanticize here, where can you?

It's almost a gift, that he can't see her right away. It gives him a moment to enjoy _this_ part.

But it's not like her not to hear the door. Failing that, he's been standing here long enough now that those investigating senses should have found him out. Uncanny, better than any pretended ESP, she usually picks him up somewhere around the elevator. It wouldn't be the first time, if Dylan had opened the door and found her already mid-sentence, speaking to him as if he were already in the room. His right hand strays out blind; there's a little table right there, and maybe there's nothing on it, maybe she's gone out.

But metal shifts under his roving fingers. Alma's keys are still here.

For a moment, Dylan is perfectly still, wishing to God he could hear the shower running or the thump in the old pipes that might mean she filled the tub. But there's nothing. Nothing, and then a hiss – something light moving over something soft, just around the corner toward the bedroom. A step forward, and he sees the gauzy curtain glancing over the carpet, pushed by the breeze off the balcony. A step closer and, though it sounds crazy, under the pounding rain outside he could swear he hears music.

One more step and all his sharpened anxieties subside. Through the blur of that curtain he sees a bright blue umbrella, the very ends of a blonde ponytail hanging down beneath the edge. She's barefoot, and the cuffs of her flannel pyjama pants are soaked. Looking down at something in the courtyard, she's distracted, and for a second so is Dylan. Not even curiosity runs as strong as the shape of her - the incurve of her back, the slight shake in the umbrella that tells him she's shivering - does through his mind. Committing it to memory. There are so many bad memories. You have to let the good ones really sink in, when they come.

Then, finally, "Wait-" as if this purely visual conversation had been spoken aloud and he has to break it off to ask, " _What_ are you doing?"

"Dylan!" He _was_ going to be worried, concerned about her standing in the rain, her bare feet, these little things. But when she hears him she flashes round, grabs him by the sleeve. There's a flicker of her smile before she pulls him too close too fast and it blurs. That's it, he forgets. Anything he might have said is gone. It's a floodlight of a smile, perpetually delighted, and always seems to come from some physical jerk deep inside. Down where other people feel fear and shock, Alma flips the switch for joy and awe.

That smile was the first thing he couldn't ignore. On a packed passenger flight, Vegas to New Orleans, convinced that somebody had to be on to him already and it was all about to come falling down around his ears, she picked his card out of a barely shuffled deck. Then the smile. And Dylan thought, _Damn_ , as she became an even great complication than she already was.

There's nothing complicated about her tonight, though. Tonight she's childish, slipping like a puppy on the tiles as she drags him onto the balcony. "Look, come and look at this!"

The music wasn't just in Dylan's head. His two monsters are back.

Down below, they figure-eight, criss-cross and weave on twin unicycles. They struggle less, in the rain and on the paving stones, than you might expect. Not that that fools Dylan; he hates, has always hated, the devotion and practice they hide under their pretend buffoonery. He could see it even as a child and hated it. How are you supposed to trust somebody who pretends to be unskilled while simultaneously slaving to perfect their performance? The little one has taken over on the kazoo. The other has opted for the ukulele. Already ridiculous, the instrument all but vanishes in those spade-like hands.

How they found him, found _her_ , is a question which enrages him unanswered, and answered will doubtless enrage him still further

They are playing, and Alma is humming along with, _I Am The Resurrection_.

She breaks off to say, "I hope something happens again. A cat ran past before and they switched to _The Lovecats_."

Maybe it's the mention of cats. When he looks back later, that's how he'll rationalize it. But, being honest, there is no rationale except the renewed panic in his chest when Dylan picks up his foot, grabs his shoe off and ratchets his arm back, taking careful aim at one or the other single bicycle wheel. Alma catches him by the wrist before he can make the pitch. "What is the matter with you?!"

Her cries draw their attention. Other balconies, other windows, there's a scattering of applause, and Alma joins with it when they bow to her.

"I already told you no!" Dylan calls down. "Take off!"

And he doesn't exactly run away, but he backs up, back inside, with the curtain between him and them and the promise of the glass too the second Alma follows him. Which should be any time now, but outside, the voice of the little one, that psychotic little _Quinn_ , is bawling up, "You know him?"

"Don't encourage them," he hisses.

Obviously, Alma ignores him. "Yes."

"You like him?"

"…For my sins."

"Could you do me a favour and tell him we're totally friendly and we're only trying to help?"

"Okay, that's enough." He chances a half-step back outside, putting his hands around her waist. Gently – at first – he tries to bring her back inside, tossing the umbrella to one side. He catches her when her foot slips forward on the tiles. It's not exactly his finest moment, but he uses that little moment of her off-balance to bring her back in, to shut the balcony door. His last ragged breath fogs the glass. When the cloud clears, her reflection is glaring into his. "Look, I'm sorry-"

"What was that?"

" _Really_ , I'm sorry, I'm really sorry but… But you don't know what you're messing with."

Anger turns to bemusement. Which is exactly what they want, it's what they depend on, it disarms you, and then they can do whatever they want, but before Dylan can explain that, "Forgive me." Except for one single note of mockery, her voice is dead. "I thought for a second that they were clowns."

"Don't. Don't do that, don't make it sound like I'm crazy." And he's definitely, _definitely_ not running away, but he turns and walks back through to the living room, to the kitchenette. Once he's there, it begins to feel very much as if he ran away, and ran into a dead end. He starts the kettle boiling just to prove he had some reason to come here.

She follows him, hitches up to sit on the counter next to the sink. "No, you're not crazy. You were just about to throw a shoe at a clown for perfectly logical reasons. Reasons which you are about to explain to me."

No. Absolutely not. But the thought of saying that out loud makes him drop his gaze in shame. A drop of frigid rainwater rolls off her foot and soaks into his one exposed sock, and Dylan goes to get a towel. "The little boy," she calls, while he's out of sight, "said to tell you that they're friendly, and-"

"I heard."

"-and that they're only trying to help. I know you heard but, for one, I said I'd pass the message on and, for two, I want you to tell me what they meant."

When he returns, he rests briefly against the kitchen counter. But he can't reach her feet, so he lets himself slide, down to the floor, the comfort of the corner pressing at his back. He bundles her up to the ankles in the towel and rubs gently, until he can't feel her shivering on the other side, until her skin is no longer so cold it chills his fingers. Up above, by occasional stretches, she takes two mugs from the rack, tea and coffee from the cupboard. He opens the fridge with his foot, kicks the milk around until his toes can hook the jug handle, brings it to himself so he can pass it up.

Not knowing quite how to begin talking again, "It's been kind of a long night, okay?"

"I know. I got all your desperate little text messages."

"Oh, and yet you answered none of them!"

"I'm not faking an emergency so you can run out on a friend in need. And you didn't really want to."

"Maybe not those first ten or twelve but after that, yes. Yes I did."

She sighs and, while she brews her tea, seems to give up on interrogation. It's her favourite interrogation technique, and Dylan knows better than to let his guard down. "And how is Merritt now?"

"Hopefully unconscious." He takes the plastic waste basket out from under the sink and holds it out for her teabag. By the time he's put it back she is passing down his coffee. "I didn't stay for the end. Jack and Lula showed up, finally – you should have seen them, they hadn't even synchronized excuses, he was saying something about traffic and I could swear she just came straight out and mentioned sex – but I didn't really hear because it was more a matter of tagging them in as we passed in the doorway-"

Alma giggles. In spite of herself, he hopes, and not at him.

"Anyway, he couldn't have lasted much longer. If he got any closer to the table he was going to have to go through it so…"

There's a brief and blessed spell of easy quiet. She approves of him right now. He can feel it beam down from her, and he knows the peaceful look on her face, the gentle warmth. She likes it when he's kind. Likes it even better when he tries to hide kindness, and she sees it a mile away like it was all flashing lights and sirens. One foot escapes the towel and strokes the inside of his wrist. But her toes are still cold, so he holds up his coffee to let the steam help.

Then, with a little emotional snap he virtually hears, "I'm sorry, I missed the part of this story that had clowns in it."

"I know. I only wanted to tell you the parts that were funny."


	5. Chapter 5

What parts were funny, what parts weren't, what parts weren't anything, what music was playing on the jukebox, what was actually said by anybody at any given point, Lula does not remember. It's eight o'clock on the morning after. She doesn't remember much with any clarity. There's more a _sense_ , a vague malaise, like waking up from the sort of nightmare that doesn't make you want to leap screaming out of bed, but rather stay in it forever. That, and the one thought that ran through her mind so many times while she was blocked into the back of that corner booth that it sears forth even through the ugly, sticky morning, _Anything bad ever happens to me, I better get_ at least _comparable attention_.

She _had_ hoped to leave all that grim business behind her. Let last night be last night. Lula _had_ intended to wake up this morning or, who knows, maybe this afternoon, probably throw up, shower, get back in bed and stay there. That's the only real reaction. Any sane person would have made the self-same plan.

Some obviously-crazy person thought different. Some lunatic set an alarm to wake her at this unbearable, aching hour, dry from her teeth all the way down to her stomach, squinting at even the grey morning light, unable to move. Given it couldn't possibly have been her – a sane sensible person who saw this morning coming and planned well for it – she suspects most heartily that the crazy in question might be lying, at this moment, right under her arm. Jack tosses his head like the pillow could block both ears if it would only put in a little effort of its own, grunting at the effort of trying to stay down in his personal dark. Lula makes no move to comfort him, or to stop the noise. He was the one who did this to them, and she's awake now. Let him suffer right along with her. In her meaner moods, she'd even venture to say that's what relationships are all about.

"Make it stop," he groans eventually. "Lula, it's _ringing_."

"That's what alarms do when you set them."

"Turn it off…"

"I don't see why _I_ should have to move."

He'd yell if he could; she can hear it on his sigh. "It's _your_ phone."

Well, that's just a very cheap trick very poorly executed. Really, he shouldn't even attempt these things when he's not up to it, and it's not like she'd be exactly difficult to confuse right now, when she's so fogged up she can't remember who got Merritt home or if anybody did at all, but – But, now that she really listens to it? Lula actually _is_ sort of familiar with the tune of the ringing. The knowing crystallizes, gradually, until her eyes snap open and she tumbles to her own side of the bed, hand flashing out to the table. She snatches her phone, taps, swipes, hand-motions basically, until the noise stops. They both drop back into the pillows.

"Can I apologize later?" she breathes. "I don't know if I have the energy to do that as well as figuring out why I set the alarm too…"

A long and critical pause, but eventually he allows, "Okay. Let's work backward."

"There is no backward. I've been there, it's all grey."

"You said something before we left. 'I'm gonna set this now, because otherwise I'll forget and… and…' Damn, that was going to be the answer, too…"

But he gave her enough. Lula stares into the ceiling as if that faded white might open up and enfold her, take her away from the brutality of the ugly world where she remembers all at once, "And Dylan would kill me, that's how that ended."

Jack, with sudden enthusiasm, "Yeah!", but he splits his own skull and withers drawing the sheets up around his face. Lula rolls back over and nuzzles in against his neck. He has that morning-after smell. She can pick out stale aftershave, the warmth of the bed, sweat tang, the rancid spice of whatever it was they ate at two a.m., not nearly long enough ago. There is, in fact, now that she can focus, a package of it, crumpled paper, still fuming gently on the floor somewhere. It's toxic, and should be in no way comforting. Still, she finds herself beginning to drift off again, that softness comes up again, rising to meet her out of the mattress and –

Too perky for early mornings, the ringing again. They both start back into waking.

"Not fair!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize, I guess I just snoozed it, I'm sorry…" This time, when Lula rolls over to stop the noise, she sits up on the edge of the bed. She makes sure this time. "I'm a terrible person, okay? And it's absolutely my fault you're awake. I accept that. I'll make it up to you later, I promise, but right now I have to go, and it would be really great if you could-"

He interrupts with renewed snoring, and Lula's plea for coffee dies away unspoken.

She stumbles up. Leaning on the table first, then the doorframe, and rolling down the hallway wall, she folds into the relative dark of the bathroom. Nice and dim. Nice and cool, too, and she spends an aesthetically-dubious moment pressing every possible inch of herself against the tiles. It's part of waking up, she tells herself, even though she runs the shower three settings colder than any other morning, fills the sink with cold water and flops face-first down on it. This last turns out to be a mistake. She only realizes she forgot to take off last night's makeup when she feels the cold water clumping it into every crease of her screwed up features. When Lula lifts her head again, she has to ease her lashes apart with the edge of her little finger.

Unsealing her eyes was another mistake. Once glance in the mirror and she closes them again, at least until she's been in the shower. Standing motionless, still practically asleep, under the flow, one hand is on the dry side of the screen, texting Dylan – _running a little late._

The reply says, _Me too_ , but it comes too quick. He was already up and active, didn't have to think about it. "Not late enough!" she growls. If her message had wakened him, she might have stood a chance.

Lula tries again with the mirror. What she sees this time still looks ragged and sick, but at least it's fresh. She's happier. And, she tells herself, allowances will be made. Yesterday's circumstances were exceptional. Similar cataclysms could befall any of them, and they would all be there, right? So yes, this morning's rehearsal is important, she's not denying that. But allowances will be made.

Trouble is, she doesn't want them to be. It's not Dylan's disappointment she hates the thought of, it's her own.

Lula should have been able to do this. Should have kept a better eye on herself last night, shouldn't have let it get to her, should have borne this morning in mind. She should be able to balance her responsibilities to the team, whatever they are and however many they might be. This should not have been beyond her. The more she thinks of it, the more she hates the innocent knot in her stomach, the dull pink at the corners of her eyes. All of this, she uses to force herself up straight, to roll the crackle out of her neck. She stares herself down in the mirror while she paints a new morning on. It's a morning all sharp edges – liquid liner and a crisp lip. Telling herself all the while, _You're fine_. _Well, no, obviously you're not_ fine _, but you're okay, and nobody is going to know that down inside your stomach is twerking gently to itself._

She talks herself back through time, maybe an hour, maybe two, into that deceptive horror between drunk and hanging way down low. Those moments when, if you should waken, you feel superb, untouchable, you ask yourself what you were worried about, congratulate yourself on avoiding the sickness that would surely have affected a lesser specimen. It means, like anybody waking up in that beautiful lie, that she'll have to live through the crash, experience it second for second. But it buys her time.

Time for ice water, for painkillers, stomach settlers, black coffee, time to find something to eat along the way, because straight out of the bathroom Lula grabs her purse and sweater and steps into her boots. She ties her laces in the elevator.

 _You're okay_ , she keeps telling herself. She makes every step to the Metro station a syllable, enforcing it. Every step beats back up at her out of the pavement, driving the message home. All around her, rush hour brushes by. Lula ignores it. Those peoples are not okay, they're rushing, they're struggling, they're dreading the day. Lula doesn't have these problems and she, therefore, is a-okay, thank you _so_ much for asking.

At the station, with time to kill, she buys water at a kiosk, gabbling the little French she has to an unimpressed attendant. He looks about as pleased as she is to be up and around at this hour. He looks like he knows a little English, or maybe would prefer she just pointed at what she wanted. There's no letting that get to her, though; Lula ploughs right on ahead in complete defiance. Defiance of him and, when she points out something that looks like cheese between two rocks that must be bread, her gut; though it pleads for her to end the abuse, she goes on, silently promising that this is the last. One more sponge, one more blockage, just eat something, _I swear, and this time for real, for sure, it's totally not poison like everything else in the last twelve hours_.

Her conversational partner, if you even want to call him that, has to turn his back to squash her breakfast into his grill. It's then, when he isn't looking, that her attention drifts. In the glass of the counter she finds her own reflection again and looks determinedly (definitely not 'desperately') _anywhere_ else.

Which is how she finds the two much stranger reflections either side of her own.

Though they don't directly seem to be watching her, Lula whips around. There's something about the shapes of them which is out of place here. For one, everybody else is rushing. They seem lazy, languorous. And the contrast, too, seems too perfect not to have been considered. One tall, clearly defined, muscular, the other short and lumpy and non-descript. Only the big one is even facing her, but when their eyes meet he reaches out and taps his friend on the shoulder.

The smaller turns around, and for the first time Lula gets the full impact of the two painted faces side by side. They are grinning. Despite their easy attitude, they both look as if underneath they are hiving, ready to break out dancing, if not combust. At this time of the morning they are all, all wrong. But unlike some, Lula is not disturbed. She's been forcing a smile since she first made that conscious decision to like her reflection and be okay. Now she feels a real one twitch the corners of her mouth.

That seems to be enough of an invitation.

They both wave. The little one darts forward and takes her hand, tries to pull her into their atmosphere. "Woah, no. Guys, no. Places to be." When Lula tries to pull away, the grip jumps from her wrist to the lapel of her jacket, and her too-sweet assailant falls to their ambiguous knees, a silent mockery of pleading. _Play with us!_

Maybe he sees the look on Lula's face, maybe he just has a better grasp of the limits; the white-painted clown gets in between them. One gentle hand eases Lula back. The other shoves his pal away. Either he channels uncanny strength down that arm or they've played this game before – the partner exaggerates, falls backward, tumbling head over heels through the crowd. The Parisians might be unamused, but Lula laughs at the fool sitting flat on the main thoroughfare, bony legs stuck out straight.

"You know, I've been in Paris for months now?" she says, "And I haven't seen a single mime?"

"Aha!" The smaller one – Lula's starting to think now that it might be a girl – jumps up and scuttles forward, "Then allow me, my fellow American, bonjour-by-the-way-Paris-is-great-right?, to present this guy, Petey, who is a hundred-purrrrr-cent legit mute and therefore the king of Mimes. Can we walk you to your platform?"

See? This is what Positive Mental Attitude gets you. There Lula was, struggling alone, forcing herself to be better than she is, putting something into the universe, and here is the universe giving back. There was Lula scraping all possible energy and happiness out from between the boards in the bottom of the barrel and here is the universe presenting her with all the energy and happiness she ever could have asked for.

There is only a pause while Lula turns to accept her croquet monsieur from the now-intrigued server. Then there's not a second's further hesitation, "Of course you can!"

White Clown turns his back. Throwing something of great weight and importance over his shoulder – it's perfect, it's visible, Lula _believes_ – he begins to struggle forward. His barker tugs down the peak of (probably-)her baseball cap and declares, "Hey, we're not walking you, we're pulling you." Another pat at Lula's lapel, encouraging, "Come on, like me –" and this guide begins a heavy walk, long steps, leaning back. "It'll cheer you up, I swear. Get pulled."

 _This is a gift_ , Lula tells herself. She states it, affirming. This is like a shaft of sunlight through a grey afternoon or a cab pulling up just as the first drop of rain lands on your nose. When hotels have surprisingly soft pillows or finding a bartender who makes your favourite cocktail just right. Being chosen by two early morning clowns at a Metro station when all your body wants to do is eat itself and die, that's a gift. A second of study and Lula produces a pretty passable imitation of the 'pulled' walk. They continue this way maybe twenty seconds, with Petey doing all the work. The guide hisses up, mock-private, "Hey, are you in a hurry?"

"I got five minutes."

"Oh, that's tonnes of time to get you happy again. Don't tell him I told you this, but Petey can get people happy in thirty seconds or less. It's a real skill, you know. People pay good money for service like that. He also gives the best hugs in the hemisphere, but that didn't come from me either, okay?"

Then probably-she winks. Lula stops being 'pulled' on the next heartbeat and rushes forward, tapping the oblivious mime on the shoulder. "I need a hug. I demand a hug. The person who is supposed to hug me fell back asleep this morning before I had to leave and _your friend –"_ Lula throws an accusing finger, a straight and swinging arm out behind her. The other clown cries out as if that finger fired a shot, crumples up clutching its heart, "Your friend says you're the best in the business, Mister. Now give it up."

Lula opens her arms, closes her eyes. She's waiting for it, but still the strength and sudden power of the hug closing around her is a shock. There's fear, almost, but it lasts less than a second, before she allows herself to be taken in by the warmth and honest love in it. Those last few feet to the platform, they rock a slow waltz, hearing the train from way on down the line and knowing there's a minute yet. "This is nice."

"You know, you play along real good," the barker says. "You ever think of a career in some kind of performance?"

Mumbling out of what is, very definitely, an extraordinary hug, "You wouldn't believe." Lula is half-asleep again against that broad, absorbing chest, when a thinner arm wheedles between them.

"Alright, Petey, let the lady get her train."

A flash of hands and angled fingers – Lula doesn't know sign-language exactly, but she knows what it looks like. "What'd he say?"

"He says you're not done yet."

"Aw!" Lula reaches out and pats the big arm that, really, yeah, by all rights, should still be wrapped across her back. "That's sweet, big guy! But I'm okay. Really, I am."

They part as the train pulls in. Lula glances back from the crush at the doors and sees the admittedly-excellent-hugger swinging the little one up on his shoulders. They wave, and the barker calls out for her to have an awesome day.

 _See?_ , she tells herself, _Get up at eight a.m., when you set an eight a.m. alarm. Never know who you're going to meet._ With a lingering smile, she raises her hand to bite into her breakfast. Her teeth close on thin air. Then they close again, testing, as if in her dreamy state she just missed the bite. Again, her teeth meet nothing but each other. "No!" and she struggles to twist around in the crowd, one palm slamming flat on the window. She just sees the shapes of them, her grilled cheese broken in half to feed them both, before the end of the tunnel can shield her from this cruel injustice.


	6. Chapter 6

The fundamental difference between New York and Paris might be summed up like this -

In New York the Horsemen's main rehearsal space was the underground car park of a building project which had stood abandoned since 2009. Unfinished concrete floors, steel stairs, sneaking equipment around in rented vans in the middle of the night, false walls drawn across to hide what they were working on, freezing any time they heard sirens. And on the fringes of the city, with the river close on one side and suburbia barely daring to creep up on the other, surrounded by chainlink and warehouses, there were more than a few sirens.

In Paris Lula gets stuck in an elevator with the stench of smoke and an art student who weighs less than she does. His eyes search her, looking for hers. Lula avoids them as best she can. Nothing to do with his appearance or not being interested or already being set in that department, thanks. More to do with the fact that he's got something that looks like a body bag with him. The shape inside is definitely human and definitely not moving, leaning stiff in the opposite corner of the steel cell she won't be taking from now on. It's only four floors, Lula can manage the stairs.

New York has a lot of weird, no doubt. But it sticks out. Weird in New York happens in flashes, sudden and blinding, either utterly delightful or mind-bendingly scary, with no in-between. In New York, weird is a deviation.

Here in Paris, and especially just around the corner from an experimental art college, the baseline on weird is way up there to begin with.

This building is full of studios just like theirs, just like the one Norman Bates here is on his way to.

Lula darts out at the fourth floor. She puts her key in the rehearsal room door and, before turning it, bobs up on her toes and knocks hard with the side of her fist at the jamb, releasing the electromagnetic lock inside. Then she covers the spyhole with her thumb. Not doing this first would result in the silent alarm activating and calling all her sleeping compatriots from their beds. Tempting as that sounds, Lula holds off and keeps her thumb in place while she lets herself in.

Two things are apparent the second she sees Dylan. First, he's eating. She curses him for that but, and this is the second thing, he's winding up to tell her how late she is the moment he swallows, so she takes advantage. "There's a guy in the elevator with a bodybag."

Mouth still half-full, struggling, "Don't ask him about it."

"Hey, none of my business, right? But I –"

"No, I mean-" A pause to properly swallow, so that he can properly explain. Lula starts looking around for the next distraction. She'll probably need to bounce him off at least one more before he forgets about her tardiness. " _I_ asked him, and he showed it to me. They're not bodies, they're mannequins, but they're all done up like… I don't even know, dead animals? He's got a car full outside but, you saw the guy, he can only carry one at a time."

"Which is how we both met him _dans l'ascenseur_."

" _Ton francais s'ameliore_."

" _Mieux que toi_ , man." She shudders, "That pronunciation. You just don't believe in accents, do you, emphasis?"

"Doesn't fit with my voice." By the narrowing of his eyes she knows she's placed herself back in danger, undone some of her own hard work up until now. Scrabbling now, a little desperate, she points suddenly over his shoulder at her second distraction. It's the one that distracted her, even from the scent of his coffee, which makes it a pretty powerful distraction.

They don't have the space here that they did in New York. There's no hiding the draped cloth at the other end of the room. It covers something maybe four feet tall and the same square. Top-centre, a smaller box is covered over as well. When Dylan won't lead her, Lula walks straight on past him to pace around it. She reaches for the cover to pull it away, then stop and looks up for permission.

"Go ahead. Make friends."

Lula gathers up the tarp and throws it aside. "Hello, friend."

Certainly her new buddy was prettier with its clothes on. The cloth removed, she has revealed something like a small table, with a heavy top. She crouches to see under. Mechanics, metal concertinas and crossovers, folding up on themselves, rubber tubing – hydraulics. Lula could make sense of it, could understand the purpose, if it weren't that she remembers the other box on top. She'll investigate that instead. Now, normally Lula _likes_ a technical challenge. The process of something beautifully and effectively engineered operating fascinates her, and she can look at a seized, still machine and make it move as it should in her mind. Normally it would take a lot more than a simple mystery box to drag her away from functional hydraulics – especially given she can't see a lever or any kind of switch.

This box, however, is just about the right size and shape to contain shoes.

She climbs up on the top, finding it solid and supportive and, right now, irrelevant, and sits cross-legged with the box in her lap. She doesn't pull at the lid _right_ away. Who wants to look silly? Who wants to look like a little girl?

"Rome," Dylan announces, the moment she starts to lift the corner. A little girl is precisely what she does look like thwarted, her lower lip stuck out damp and trembling. She never made him forget at all, did she? She was late and if he can't lecture her, he'll torture her for it. "Two weeks from now."

"But… But," and her fingertips are scratching at the cardboard lip, so much more needy now they've been denied, "But you told us this already. Rome, big moment, crazy finale, you told u-"

" _Right_. And it's _your_ finale." Oh, now, _now_ he learns how to do emphasis. Now, when he needs her to know that this is all deliberate, now it suits his voice. "You're the girl in the box, Lula. It's all on you and the audience never even knows it." This is just insulting. These are basic principles. He can't even find anything more interesting to say to waste all this air pouring out of him. He goes on and on at her about 'the classics', how anybody with a half a brain could think them out if they really wanted to, how the real trick is making them not think at all. "I mean, this finale, it's your standard Cremation. We're a little restricted by location, but the set-up really ought to set it apart – Merritt's working on that, and –" This is, word-for-word, the same speech he gave out a week ago in this same room, to all of them over chow mein and fried rice. " – couple of pretty serious quick-changes. You can practice those another time, because the outfits aren't ready just yet-"

Lula taps a pointing finger down on the box lid, "Is this part of the outf-?"

"But really it ought to be straightforward except for the f-"

" _Okay_!" she cries, "Okay, I was late! I'm sorry, I was late. You abandoned us with Merritt last night, I don't know what time I got home at or by what means or what I did when I got there, I was late, I was late, late-late-late, I said it. Can you stop now?!"

"Yes. And you can open the box." All thoughts of silliness and childishness gone, Lula tears the lid off with such speed and force it catches in the crook of her arm and flips up to hit her face before tumbling over her shoulder. While she recovers from the fumble, Dylan walks back to the windowsill. He left his breakfast there, the coffee and sugar-coated choux. He would have tormented her with those, Lula knows, if there hadn't been the shoebox. "And Lula? I've been misdirecting since before you were born?"

In a mumble, "Yeah, sure…" Her eyes are on the contents of the box. The part of her brain that should answer him whirrs useless, spinning and sparking and producing absolutely nothing. "Could you do me a favour and pretend I said something witty and ingratiating about the master and the pupil that totally didn't reference your age in any way?"

"Sure thing."

Given the morning she's had so far, and his attitude, and the long wait to open it, Lula had half-expected the box to be full of ashes or coal or something else that naughty girls traditionally get from Santa Claus. If spring-loaded snakes had launched out at her, it would have been consistency, nothing else. Instead Lula is now wriggling her feet out from underneath herself so she can kick off her boots. The box, unlike anything else this morning except her alarm, has fulfilled its promise. It has given her shoes. Rocket heels, purple satin, custom made, she slips one on and feels like Cinderella, it fits her so perfectly.

"Is this because you missed my birthday?"

"Your birthday's in September."

"I meant the last one."

"The one before we met?" Lula shrugs; he was the one who picked the time to recruit her. He could have done it last September.

She puts on the second shoe and stands up on the platform, looking down at the shape of her feet, and of course a good heel always makes her legs look longer. Of course, what she really ought to be thinking about is the gift itself, since a 'gift' is obviously the last thing it is. There must be some purpose, some special use for the shoes, some hidden secret. If Lula would take a second just to think, she'd get in a heartbeat. But she doesn't want to think. She wants to look at her beautiful feet. She wants to walk around, and dance.

There's just time for a brief soft-shoe in the centre of the platform before Dylan joins her. He paces around the edges, his head around the height of her hips. Carrying that coffee of his, those sweet little pastries. The scent of them draws Lula along with him, testing out the click of her new heels along the way. Dylan may well be talking, but mostly she hears the clicks. Actually, they're more like clacks. It might, in fact, be a _tock_. Yes, the sound is a _tock_. It's because of the thicker heel, see, and so solid, and-

A step on the far left corner. The platform slams down almost to the floor, leaves Lula suspended like a cartoon character running over a cliff for just one impossible moment before gravity slams her too.

Her ankle twists on the landing, pitches her into an awkward, slanting crouch.

When she looks up, she finds Dylan smiling. "Electromagnetic switch," but she's already nodding. "There's a metal contact concealed in the sole of your shoe. When it meets the switch, the floor drops out. And we need to ship this apparatus out in the next couple of days, so that's what I need you to practice. If, that is, you can concentrate for ten minutes, preferably consecutive?"

For an answer, Lula reaches up and tries to snatch one of the choux from the box in his hand. He's quicker and pulls it away. "Get your own breakfast."

"Well, I tried, but the _clown_ stole it, and I know that sounds like 'the dog ate my homework', but think about it, I mean, really think – " In the meantime, since the real rehearsal is obviously about to begin, she pulls down the zipper on her sweater, starting to tug it off, "- would I say something so stupid if it wasn't true?"

Dylan says nothing. She looks up again, looking for a reason why. All she sees immediately is that he believes her. Absolutely and unquestioningly, he believes that a clown stole her breakfast. Then she follows his hollowed-out gaze down her shirt, just beginning to appear. She grabbed it off the end of the bed this morning. Pale grey and relatively wrinkle-free, it seemed like a clean option. Feeling now how it fits under her sweater, it's probably Jack's.

And it's got something written on it, some slogan she has trouble making out upside down. Dylan can read it.

Hasty, patchy slashes of black chisel-tip. _TALK TO US PLEASE_.


	7. Chapter 7

Unlike yesterday, when the weather seemed to know better than to smile on Paris, today is dry. It's even warm, if you can catch a little sunlight. Danny can't. He's on a roof on the other side of the river from the studio. An old building, outclassed on all sides by newer and taller, he sits on a creaking antique deck chair, curled up close with Bibi.

"No," he murmurs to his companion. "I don't know what I'm going to do about Rebecca. Need to find out what she's up to before I can do anything about her."

Bibi twitches her snow white nose, that quiet, thoughtful little gaze fixed on him. A little tremor under her skin, shifting her ears, Danny gets the sense she wants to help. Maybe she even has some idea for him, some clue that might at least trigger him on to higher thought. But if she does she keeps it to herself. Sometimes just talking to Bibi helps.

Sometimes it starts to feel like a very one-sided relationship.

Eventually her back legs start to beat his stomach, which means she wants to go back inside. "Fine. Honestly, you get antsy, I take you out. I take you out, you want to go back in. I'm confiding in you, Bibi. And I get _nothing_ back."

Danny lifts her up, childlike, in the crook of his arm and carries her back into the ramshackle shed behind him. It was, maybe, a greenhouse at some point, judging by the ironwork. But there's no glass over those rusting curls now, just boards. At the back wall, the doves ruffle round the roost, mutter amongst themselves about the returning magician. Do they talk about him having a favourite rabbit?

 _No_ , he tells himself, _they're pigeons_.

Still, when he puts Bibi back in her hutch by the door, he makes a point of stroking Mabel's ears, and briefly takes Fluffy out to be held. By rabbit standards, Fluffy has been around a while. "I don't want you to worry about anybody getting rid of you," Danny tells her. "Because I, personally, have learned that just causes trouble for all involved. I don't care if you get too big for the mirror box. You can stay on as… as mascot. Okay?" Fluffy turns away from him, straining back towards the hutch gate. "Funny you should say that," and he lets her go, leaping the gap out of his arms, "That's how Henley felt t-"

He stops, frozen. There was a noise. Maybe – masked by him latching the hutch door, there was maybe a noise outside. Maybe…

Not standing up, Danny leans over to the boarded irons. Using the dark screen of his phone for a mirror, he pushes it through a gap to outside. And yes, there was a noise; the main door to the roof opening and closing. Now there's a figure, indistinct in the blurred reflection, coming slowly but steadily towards him. It doesn't quite manage a straight line. The weaving might be intentional or not.

Danny gets up, bolts the door, makes sure all the cages are locked. Then he opens the gate on the roost and slips carefully inside. If their doves were wary before, they're downright outraged now, a little giggle of coos going up, fluttering away from him along their perches. "Shut up," he hisses. "I don't like it any more than you do. And yes, I prefer the rabbits to you." But the back wall behind the birds is rigged, to let him vanish if he needs to. Out back, over the edge of the roof, a blind backward drop onto the fire escape, into the hotel below. It's not a difficult disappearance by any means, but still he's twitchy. Feeling behind him for the turn in the boards, making sure, he can feel his heart racing under the trained calm. _It's just your heart_ , that's how he deals with it, telling himself, _It's a good thing, energy release, adrenaline, it's a necessary thing_. He reduces the physical sensation to being just that and no more. Deny the emotional consequences. They'll wait. They don't like it and it tends to make them vicious, but that's okay. Later, behind closed doors, vicious is okay.

Vicious is okay when the source emotion is anger. Luckily, today, anger is exactly what Danny is feeling, if he would only tune in to that frequency. Anger. _Resentment_. Because if they're made, discovered, there's no coming back here.

It's times like this, with your back quite literally to the wall, you learn what really matters to you; it's Fluffy he wants to go back for. The restless, childish Bibi can go to police quarantine with the doves.

But then the door rattles. The hand that tries to shove it wasn't expecting the bolt, or any kind of lock. Wouldn't an intruder expect a lock?

"Hello? Who's in there? I swear to God, if you have brought harm to either fur or feather in there-"

Danny sighs, sinks forward like a puppet with the strings cut. There's an ugly, draining moment, slumped with his fingers through the chicken-wire gate. All that rage goes out of him, chasing after the evaporated adrenaline, and all the plans he'd already made for getting out of the hotel and warning the others and what would follow after – threads he didn't know he'd chased so far until they were so quickly severed just now.

There's still his heart rate. That's taking a little longer to settle than it ought to.

He hesitates too long waiting for it to drop; the visitor gets agitated, beating at the door again. Over in their hutch, Fluffy and Mabel huddle together, shuddering. "Wait," he calls, loud as he dares without spooking the doves. "It's me, wait, hang on," edging back out of the roost, rushing to slam back the bolt.

What light the door lets in is almost entirely blocked; Merritt leans with a hand either side of the frame, slung forward. His arms seem to be doing more to keep him upright than his feet are. Dark glasses bring the shadow of his hat down almost to his mouth. Later, when there's time to think about it, Danny will tell himself off, jumping to apocalyptic conclusions when, really, the reeling walk across the roof should have told him everything he needed to know.

Merritt eyes him, head drawing back until he stacks new chins, then lifting his glasses, putting them back in place. Finally, slowly, "No… But… It's my turn today. You're not on zookeeper detail until Tuesday. Unless… Daniel, have you been chatting with that harlot Bibi again?"

"I don't talk to Bibi."

"Jack's got a video that begs to differ."

"Anymore. Bibi's been… less than helpful, lately. Anyway, who knew where you were going to be today?" The edge of a smile under all those shadows; it's either as much appreciation as Merritt is currently capable of, or as much as he thinks the joke deserves. Danny's not sure he likes either option. He's not sure he likes the fact that Merritt seems to think the pleasantries are dispensed with, either, the extra forward lean, expecting Danny to move out of the way.

Danny keeps firm hold of the door. "I don't know if I should let you in. You might scare them."

An ugly pause; displeasure only ever seems to affect one side of Merritt's face, drags it up along the edge of his nose, half-snarl half-smile. After a second, one hand darts off the doorframe and pokes hard at Danny's right shoulder. Instinct – false, but no less powerful for that – tells Danny he's about to spin and fall, that there's too much force in the turn, he needs to compensate. So he turns hard towards the impact, and leaves the doorway open on his left. Merritt slides by, chest to chest, and Danny turns his face away from his stale and possibly still flammable breath.

"Now, I appreciate that I'm no oil painting at the best of times, and certainly not this morning –"

"It's three p.m."

" – But didn't I get here? Despite my personal circumstances, didn't I make the effort towards the group responsibility? Shame on you, Daniel Atlas, for overlooking that, just because I happen, right at this moment, to look like a-"

"Sack of shit."

"Don't be cruel."

"No, where you're about to sit down." Merritt shoves off the wall he'd been sinking against, glaring at the canvas sack on the floor as if it betrayed him deliberately. "I mean, it's mostly straw, but there is a much larger proportion of rabbit and bird excrement in there than you might generally encounter."

Shifting his suspicions from the sack, which after all is physically incapable of scheming, to Danny, who patently is, Merritt edges back to the door. He reaches out for the deck chair, dragging it inside, and his eyes never once leave Danny. Once he's settled himself somewhere sanitary, however, he concedes a polite request, "May I see Miss Fluffy, please?"

Danny shifts foot to foot, bites in his lips before he ventures, "Why?"

"Comfort, Daniel. Cuddles."

"Hang on, I'll get you Kirby."

"Oh, good idea. Lula mentioned she was the worst spooked yesterday, what with the thunder and everything. Shaking in the corner of the hutch, poor thing."

"No, it's just that Kirby has no sense of smell after that time with the squib and the flashpaper."

With his head hanging down, there is a single narrow bar between Merritt's hat and his glasses, to show Danny bloodshot eyes going narrow. "Now that's just insulting. I am fresh as a daisy, my friend. I _bathed_."

"Sleeping in the tub is not the same thing as bathing. And even if it were, clean skin isn't much good if last night is still seeping out of your pores."

There is a line. They're both cagily aware of it, toeing the edges. Both of them can see the line just beginning to blur, just getting a little foggy as to what's good-natured and what's a little sharper. It is Kirby who brings the definition back. She does little more than snuffle, sitting docile in one pair of hands before another take her and hold her in close, but she is more important than she could ever know. Kirby, and the willing gift of Kirby from zookeeper to the man in need of cuddles, keeps things civilized.

Because of Kirby, Danny knows the malice that follows is hollow. "I'll come clean, Atlas, you're the reason I left the house this morning-"

"Afternoon."

" - I knew you were here. That's why I came. Because I know, if I can sit here a while, and _not_ strangle you? Then I can handle anything else this day might throw at me."

"What day? I told you, it's mid-afternoon already."

Just for something to do, just to have something else to look at and some movement, Danny grabs up the birdseed and scoop from their shelf and lets himself back into the roost. "Forgive me, Danny, but you seem to be putting some added oomph into your ongoing porcupine impersonation today."

 _Just feed the birds_ , Danny tells himself, _And don't look him in the eye again_. Which is ridiculous, the last part, it's irrational, and out of character, and probably something to do with the lingering flutter against his ribs, that sensation of an edge, a precipice, that just won't let go of him today. He would know if Merritt had done something to him. Rather, if he had _tried_ to, because obviously Danny looks out for these things. That's why none of it works on him. Which is why he doesn't quite understand the way he seizes up, the way all the truth queues up at the back of his tongue, ready to come tumbling out and be told and stop poisoning him, to be given up to Merritt – or maybe to anybody who would have asked the question; "It wouldn't have anything to do with Becky, would it?"

All the truth hangs momentarily at parted lips. Then Danny swallows it back. "I can handle Rebecca."

"Well, that's good to know. But it's not what I asked you."

The coop is starting to feel too much like a cage again. Danny goes to the gate, but stops short of letting himself out. At the back of his mind two thoughts click together, making sudden sense. He stays put, leans on the back wall again. He doesn't want to disappear, exactly, but he applies that little pressure to the turning mechanism again. Just until it clicks. Just to know he _could_ disappear, if he really wanted to. "I'm not really the first person you've spoken to today, am I?"

For once, it's Merritt who looks away. He tucks his head down to one side, addressing Kirby more than Danny, in the sweetened mumbles reserved for pets and toddlers, "Be fair; I said you were my first _visit_. Dylan came to me." A brief smug smile, "He made me breakfast."

"Lunch."

"That is so like you, to privilege an arbitrary little thing like the time of day a man eats over so many other factors."

"Such as his hangover?"

"Such as the nature of the meal – some very fine pancakes, thank you for asking. Such as the nature of the meal itself, the breaking of the night-time fast-"

"Well, everybody knows you didn't eat enough last night."

"And certainly it was the most important meal of _my_ day." This time when Merritt breaks off, Danny doesn't have the retort ready. There is one, it's waiting for him, but he can't quite get at it, and is growing increasingly reluctant to go looking for it. "He's just worried."

"I told you, I can handle Rebecca. Just a matter of finding out what she wants and I… I've got that in hand." Which is a lie and anybody listening with half an ear would know as much but luckily Merritt skips it. Less lucky, something like pity replaces the mock-disdain.

"Worried about _you_. What was that like? Seeing her again, I mean. Talking, not knowing why." Danny braces himself. This time when he puts his hand on the gate, he opens it, lets himself out. He crosses to Merritt and holds out his arms, waiting to take Kirby back. "Aw, c'mon, man, I'm bonding with a performance partner here." Danny only waits, even a second after he begins to feel silly and uncomfortable, stood there with his arms out. The second after that, he's left it too long to give up and can only wait.

Eventually Merritt stands. He gives back the rabbit, tips his hat. He turns for the door while Danny is crouched by the hutch, apologizing to Kirby for the inconvenience.

But the silence is no good. Merritt seems willing to let it slide but that's only because it doesn't belong to him. He wasn't the one to drag it down on them like a lead blanket. Danny lets him get halfway out the door before he relents. "So what are your plans for the rest of the evening? Another pity party?"

Does he imagine it, or is that a sigh? Is that relief that breaks like a bubble on the first word of a final wisecrack? Or is Danny just forgiving himself? "No such thing as a McKinney pity party. One night of oblivion was quite enough, thank you. No, Daniel, I'm going home to study. I've got twelve days to learn Italian."

With that he steps out of sight. Unable to help himself, Danny shouts, "Wait, the show is in _fourteen_ days."

Just Merritt's head comes back, around the door. All of a sudden he looks better, brighter. There is less sickness in his skin and more of himself in the smile and Danny gets that creeping feeling again, that paranoid itch, he might just have been played. "Yeah. _Yours_ is."


	8. Chapter 8

By the time he's halfway down the hotel stairs, Merritt has Dylan on the phone. "You were right," he says. It ought to be a cold and soldierly report he's giving, and for the most part it is. His voice isn't even one note away, but rather in between them, just doubtful enough to get stuck on a minor chord. "On a scale of one to screwed, she really got to him. Good news is, Fluffy and co seem to be taking good care of him. You want me to stick around here, keep an eye out?"

Dylan seems to consider it, sighs himself out of the idea, "Nah, forget it."

"All-righty. I'll just head on home and start learning my Italiano, then, ahead of next week, and-"

"Make one more stop for me first."

Right-foot-left-foot, Merritt stops dead on a landing. His instinctive _No_ sits stopped on his tongue, and is just able to hold back the tide of _You do it_ and _What happened to the last servant?_ , the dozens of easy phrases that pile up to shove it out between his lips. It even holds up when the more creative exclamations creep up at the back, slower but so much more powerful and satisfying. But by holding the No that created them all, Merritt manages to maintain silence, albeit of a very dangerous kind.

He never intended leaving his bed today, agreed to _this_ little excursion only because Atlas had been so kind as to come feed the animals in his place. And because he doesn't quite have a count on how many times he told the talent show story last night.

So he doesn't speak, but only waits, and eventually Dylan tries again, "Come on. It's on your way. Well, y'know, you might need to change trains. …Couple of times. Get a cab-"

"Where?"

"…Champs de Mars?"

"You mean the Eiffel Tower. You're sending me to _the_ biggest tourist draw in the world in the middle of the afternoon. How do I even know who I'm looking for?"

"Oh, that's the easy part. You want a nine-foot hunchback in a Chinese robe."

Now, generally Merritt doesn't respond too well to being told what to do. Especially blind like this, especially with so little explanation as Dylan goes on to give him. But, by the same token, you don't _generally_ get to hear the phrase 'nine-foot hunchback in a Chinese robe' on an ordinary day. And, you know, when there's been so much bad news and tension of late, who could resist such a lead?

And by the time he realizes that this curious and needy nerve of his was stroked very much on purpose, he's halfway there and it would be petty to cut and run.

The time of day and the crowds are precisely what he expected when he was first given the location. Within a minute, Merritt has developed an enveloping, smothering sense of suffering, of having been tricked, of choking on someone else's dirty work. Though he's not nearly so decrepit and spent as Danny needed to think, neither is Merritt by any means his best and shiniest self just now. This Beast from the East needs to live up to its billing (which deep down he already knows won't happen), or this needs to be quick.

One foot on the wall of a flower bed, he pushes up to see clear across the mass of bobbing heads – the snaking line for the tower, the wandering souls with their back to the iron, only interested in the garden, clusters around ornamented food kiosks, the band of upturned camera lenses, a wall of them all the same paced-back distance to get the whole landmark into the viewfinder. And, yes, in credit to Dylan, up above them all, one enormous head swings heavy and doglike from an arched back, draped in gold embroidered silk.

He fixes his eyes on it and starts to move through the crowd. On his slow-zoom inspection, the head transpires to be a kind of moulded mask, a papier-mache grotesque of a smirking face. The jaw is worked from inside. It snaps at the occasional tourist, raising squeals and laughter before meandering on.

Sometimes a hand will slip out down low, tapping some little kid on one shoulder and then darting to the other. And there are hands much higher up that will come out and wave or pluck sunglasses from an unsuspecting head, testing them against the mask's cut-out eyes, holding them up too high to be retrieved. Playing. The nine-foot hunchback in a Chinese robe is playing with the people in the park.

But playing must be hungry work; as Merritt gets close, the monster lumbers up to a venerable old cart serving crepes from under a tricolour awning too French to really be French. First he waits to see how the games will continue here, but then the great jaw slams down low, and the upper set of hands are reaching out with money. The seller passes up the paper plate, then points at something midway down the robe. More gabbling Merritt doesn't catch, but the smaller hands seem to point further along the path.

And sure enough, the beast ambles on along – with much less jaw action now that the operator is presumably otherwise occupied – until it comes to an ice cream stand keeping cool in the tower's shade. This time, a portion of the front of the robe opens. Most of the communication is done by points and gestures this time, but the result is the same. The lower half of the hunchback gets its treat, the cone disappearing back inside the silk tent with it.

Merritt decides to give both halves a moment, seeing they're eating and all. He decides to make a final, brief phonecall to Dylan. Just to make sure. Just to be absolutely, one hundred percent, certain, that nobody anywhere in this whole scenario might have slightly let just one or two of the old marbles roll away under the couch…

He calls at a worse time than before. Instead of 'hello', the snap comes, "What?!", and even this too-blunt greeting isn't completed, but breaks off in favour of yelling at someone in the background. A high-pitched imitation of a woman, "Ah, oh, I'm dead now, why would you do that to me, I thought it was supposed to be true love."

Marbles. Merritt nods sagely to himself. He was right. And he's not distressed, not in the slightest. Some men just aren't built for the pressures of leadership. It was only a matter of time before Dylan snapped completely.

But he better just check. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting for Jack to learn to count, so that he won't _murder his girlfriend with fire live on stage!_ "

"Stop saying that, man, it doesn't help!"

"Doesn't help you, maybe. Helps me. Might even do something for Lula when the time comes." Merritt holds the phone away from his ear while the fighting goes on, maybe a minute, maybe two. Then there's a sound suspiciously like the _vwoosh_ of a firebreather's party piece, and the studio's fire alarm starts up wailing. That's what it takes to bring Dylan's attention back to what ought have been a twenty second phone call. Would it be petty to mention that? It would, wouldn't it? Merritt opens his mouth to mention it anyway, but gets instead, "Be quick."

"You said nine-feet tall in a Chinese robe and I got all these images in my head of the Mystic East. But all I seem to have here is a pair of sweet-toothed street performers-"

"Be smarter than that." And, like that, yelling about fire extinguishers, Dylan is gone.

Maybe all the marbles are in their worn-yet-elegant pouch, but Merritt meant what he said about the pressures of leadership. Firefighting and team-briefing ought not be considered multitasking, in his opinion. They shouldn't be mutually exclusive. No cause to break a sweat, in Merritt's opinion, though that obviously depends on how close you're standing to the fire…

He smiles at his own joke. That bolsters him. That gives him the boost he needs to try and weave a little closer to the compound monster.

Too late he sees one of the great swathes of the robe tug flat, and realizes the material is not entirely opaque. He might not be able to see in from this distance, but the lower half has almost certainly seen him. He can tell by the stop in its walk, the way the mask starts to swing wildly back and forth, letting the one inside look out the gaping mouth. Maybe the upper one doesn't spot him right away; Merritt sees little feet kicking under the silk, light against the other's ribs, begging for help.

He hears the yelling, "What?" and after the French at the crepe stand the flat, obnoxious accent catches him by surprise. " _Qu'est-ce que c'est_ , big guy? What is it?"

The lower hands reach out, and they clap. It takes a second for Merritt to catch on to their odd, broken rhythm, but once he does the meaning is all too obvious – it's the beating of horse hooves.

"Horsey?" cries the one above. "Horsey!"

Merritt can't see any eyes, but he _feels_ them. They zero in like lasers, holding him to the spot. He is more than familiar with the method, less accustomed to being its object. Less accustomed still, to feeling like the focus comes from some genuine intensity and excitement, and not a concerted effort to make him stay put. Still, staying put is exactly what he does. "Horsey-horsey-horsey," is the chanting, a deliberate imitation of a child, cut through with hysterical laughter. The beast approaches, so much faster than before, and as it comes it seems to dismantle itself, collapsing piece by piece. The mask falls down to the lower half, the top of the robe caving in. Then the top two feet slither off down the back and gather up the silk as they go, until only the skeleton remains – the lower half a man clomping along on stilted shoes, the upper half a god-knows-what, it's so muffled in the robe, like nothing so much as a parachute caught in a tree. At the sight of their painted faces, a little sweat-stained from inside the costume, "Oh my God…" The big one still has ice cream wafer crumbs stuck to his greasepaint. This is what they are at six feet away from Merritt.

At four feet, the little one is talking into an oversized sweater cuff, "Sub-target designated 'Bald Eagle' is in the nest, repeat, Bald Eagle is in the nest."

At two feet, the big one throws the mask to its companion and falls to his knees, right to the floor, head lowered, grabbing at the hems of Merritt's pants.

"Woah, okay," scuttling back out of those clutches.

"Be kind!" the little one snaps, then softens, "You're his favourite!" Favourite what and favourite why and how it is they know him at all, Merritt doesn't think to ask. Certainly not because he's smiling, not because he puffs up at the compliment, no, nothing like that, he's just distracted by the full grown human knelt in reverence at his feet. The little one uses its folded friend as a table, putting the mask down first and balling the robe up into it, held there with shoelaces. This makes a neat package which it is able to wear on its back. All the while, still talking, "Not me, I like Jack, used to like Henley but, well, not exactly an option anymore, but you've always been his favourite. He saw reruns of your old TV specials when he was little, turned into kind of a fascination for him, he's got your t-shirt and everyth-"

At this, the big one finally gets off the ground. A parody of embarrassment, hiding his face with one hand, the other over the little one's mouth while it pretends to go on talking uninhibited.

Cute. It's all very cute. It is, in fact, a step past cute, into the territory of funny.

Trouble is, Merritt is in no mood to be amused. They finish their bit and look to him, expecting, waiting for the praise of a smile, for even a twinkle in his eye. He disappoints them. The little one mutters something about 'goddamn magicians', but Merritt misses it, grabbing the muscle by his chin. Fierce and sudden eye contact; you know you've got them when you see that little backward stutter, not the whole body, just the chest. All that fight flaring and dying inside a heartbeat. That's how you know you're in their head. All the doors are open.

In clear, round syllables, so that he cannot be mistaken, "Rebecca Dasko." Then rapid fire, "Yes-no-yes-no… _No_? You'd answer if you didn't know, it's not a No. Maybe it's the name, maybe Becky, maybe a tall blonde, green eyes, maybe, since you seem to know everything, you know the history, and the former assistants, maybe you know, it's not a no, you know, you know something or you'd have said something by now, and that _thing_ that got off your shoulders wouldn't be trying to distract me."

The little one has been darting about all this time, repeating his name, over and over. Now it has had enough. It darts forward and shoves him hard at the ribs, so that Merritt lets go of the other clown and staggers. "Hey! He'd answer if he could, but he can't!" and it flings up its hands like a game-show hostess, framing his mouth. The muscle drops his jaw down like the one on the mask. Behind the teeth, there's only dark.

Merritt flinches, eyes shut. "I don't need to see that."

When he opens his eyes again, they've forgotten him momentarily. Flashing hands, absorbed in each other. The little one catches him watching and begins to explain, "He says you should never-"

"Meet your heroes." Merritt nods.

Is that guilt? Does he feel bad? His head sank when he read that signing. He knew what meaning he would find even as he was glossing over his first rough translation and there was a moment… Merritt almost hated himself. That knot in his stomach, is that guilt? When the freak's expression of hero worship was dirt-literal (literally), why in hell is it he can feel the red heat climbing his neck, creeping up his cheeks.

By the time he starts to laugh at himself, it's too late; the little one is sulking. "If you want a tall hot blonde, try the Moulin Rouge."

Marbles. Marbles everywhere. A floor full of marbles and none left in the bag. Merritt moves to leave, to get away from them.

"Wait!" the gabbler cries. "Wait, that's it? Nothing from Mr Shrike?" A glance back gives Merritt something new to be surprised about; this part is heartfelt. In the kid's eyes, it's big friend's empty-handed gesture. They are all confusion and loss. If you wanted to strike, to hurt, to use them for anything, now would be the time. Merritt, unable to think of any possible use for such a strange and possibly-idiot pair, watches their hands instead.

The mute signing, _Mom and Dad are gonna kill us_.

Which puts the fresh steam for one last desperate clutch into his friend, "He's not coming? We really thought that's why you were here. We can meet him somewhere else if he needs us too, we just thought here where it's so public and busy and we'd be disguised, he'd feel safer. He didn't even send a message?"

"Y'know, now that you mention it –" They're not the only ones with practice in the pantomime; Merritt's imitation of remembering something staggering, some blinding light of revelation, is impressive. Normally he's not one to blow his own horn, but really, this is pretty damn good. To hell with anybody who might say there was a great deal of similar overacting in his early career. It's not untrue, but to hell with anybody who might say it. Killjoys. And on this occasion, he does not one iota more or less than is required; Merritt makes sure those kids behind him have not one single shred of hope left. That's even before he tells them, "Nothing."


	9. Chapter 9

"I'm just saying, maybe don't listen to anything Dylan says for the next little while, okay?"

There's a rustle in Jack's earpiece, Lula adjusting her own; wondering if she heard him right. Their connection is good enough that he hears the rumble of conversation around her too, bright little taps of porcelain and silver cutlery, a moped whirring by – "Even if Dylan says I should sit outside a swank hotel and drink good coffee and-" A swoop; something makes her turn her head so fast he hears the air rush past her earpiece, "Ooh, _donnez-moi une de ceux-la, s'il vous plait_? Oui? Yes?" She's smiling when he gets her attention back. "Cake, I'm getting cake, tiny little pink cake with strawberries in the middle and something shiny on top."

"I don't remember him saying anything about coffee and cake. More about keeping watch for Dasko?"

"He didn't say _not_ to have coffee and cake."

Jack decides to drop it there. First off, it leaves her laughing, and thinking she's being cute. He likes the first one and the second one's true. It's also true that she needs to blend in down there, and the order helps with that. Lula hasn't arrived at that argument yet. If she does, and thinks he hasn't, thinks she has to explain it to him, her level of smug is going to jump up to unbearable.

Third and maybe even slightly more important than those reasons that revolve around that voice and all the charm of it in his ear, he's got other concerns just now. Jack is on a fourth floor landing looking up at a sixth floor suite balcony and wondering how to get there. There are no locks to pick on the hotel doors, they all use swipe cards. No good to him – this late in the day there's no hope of even stealing a skeleton key from housekeeping. But the sixth floor is the top floor. He makes his way to the end of the hallway and onto the service stairwell.

Danny was the one who found out where Rebecca is staying.

Are you surprised? Everybody else seems to be surprised, when they hear that. Dylan, Merritt, even Lula and everything she knows about Rebecca is third-hand, heard from the others reliving the early bickering and later yelling of Henley's tenure with the team. They all seem surprised, even suspicious. So much so that Jack hasn't even dared ask _why_. Isn't it natural? Danny's the one with the history, Danny knows her best, Danny spent all last night talking to her when, from what Jack remembers, they could have used his help with Merritt in the booth. There hasn't been one minute gone by this whole day where somebody wasn't worried about Danny.

And they're surprised he did something about it? Jack must be missing something really, really obvious. So he hasn't asked yet.

At the top of the stairwell he is faced with an alarmed fire door. Faced with, but not phased by. On the whole he's been unimpressed with European alarm systems so far. After the doors to rooftops back home, or the ones on subway maintenance tunnels which cannot be slipped and you just have to force them and run, this is basic. Your standard, minimum health and safety requirement wired hinge – it's probably not working to begin with, and even if it is it's probably not switched on. But no point taking the chance when it's so easy to rig. He trips the circuit with a foil gum wrapper and yanks out the single flimsy wire between the hinge and the alarm. For just one moment he pauses, watching the flashing green light on the box above. Just in case; you get the odd tamperproof trap that yells out silently if somebody tries to get around it.

But it's as he thought; the light goes right on flashing. Less a fire safety measure, more Compliance-and-Liability.

"Where are you?" Lula asks as he crosses the roof. "I can hear the breeze."

"Look up."

He stands on the edge and picks her out by the wide-brimmed hat she seemed to think made her look _less_ like a tourist. Watching her try to find him subtly costs him a few seconds he probably shouldn't waste. But first she tries to use the metal of an ashtray on the table. Then, finding the reflection too blurry, she uses the screen on her phone, and pretends she's checking her hair, her lipstick, scanning windows and balconies until the shape of him cut on the sky finally draws her attention. She doesn't believe it though, has to turn and look. This move she disguises (disguises? She's trying, it's fine, give her credit) with a yawn and stretch.

It's a stupid risk to take, but when he knows she's looking, Jack waves. "No, don't do that. Just the silhouette is good. Got that Gotham City thing going on."

He laughs, "Shut up," and finally looks down for the balcony he needs.

"You don't think you'd make a good Batman? What about Robin? No, done with the whole sidekick gig, am I right? Well, who then? You tell me. Come on. I can hear you smiling, you've totally got one."

Crouched on the edge, about to drop a storey down and maybe be seen at any moment. "Daredev- _Ow_ , damn it!"

Suddenly serious, "What was that?"

"I'm fine. Bad landing."

"What are you, blind?"

Which is a pretty good joke. They both know it, and if he ignores it she's likely to think he's doing it on purpose, maybe even that he's offended. Jack knows all of this but in a dim way, in some less important part of his mind. The main part is focussed on discovering, it wasn't a bad landing at all. It's just that he landed on a shoe. Ivory coloured with a four inch heel and a grey-green print on it now from his own sole, grubby with rooftop dirt and moss.

Just the one shoe, sitting alone on the balcony. The ironwork chair has a scarf caught around the legs and a pile of magazines, all open and creased and wrong way up, on the seat. There's pink clinging around the white tiles where red wine got spilled and wasn't cleaned up, and a half-eaten croissant on the table.

"I did not have her down as a pig." The croissant is still good, though. While he picks the lock on the balcony door, he bites into it. Say the pigeons got it. Say you oughtn't leave good pastry behind.

"Oh, c'mon. You saw her purse last night."

"…Did I?"

"What are you eating?"

"Don't talk to me, you've got cake."

"Well, anyway, you remember or… or maybe you don't because it took a while to come back to me, but she was getting something from her purse? And there was just this endless pile of really weird stuff she kept pulling out first? Like, that purse was _bottomless_ , man. You _remember_ – the wind-up car? And it drove off the bar and Danny caught it?"

Jack winces. Yes, he remembers. Merritt thought he was seeing things. That's when they decided to start calling cabs.

Inside is no better than the balcony. Rebecca mustn't have let the maid in today at all. The bedclothes have been knotted and whirlpooled and still show the channel she crawled out of. Another wine stain, and one that might be beer or might not be. An open box spills cold pizza over the dresser. Jack considers it. Leans in close, sniffs for mould and then for anchovies. Neither of those, but still, he rethinks, walks away. Stick with the croissant.

Half a glance in the bathroom and he shuts the door on it.

"Okay… What am I even looking for?"

"We need to know what she's planning. Why now, why Paris?"

His toe nudges another half-eaten meal, a room service plate half-hidden beneath the bed. "World famous cuisine?"

"The cake _is_ pretty good."

"You should try the croissants." He meant it as a joke; he's a little surprised when he hears her stop that same waiter on another pass. "Can you do that? Go from sweet to savoury?"

"Oh, no problem. But anyway, while you're hunting, just to return to the conversation you thought you'd dodged –" She gives him just enough time to roll his eyes, to bite back a groan. "Yeah, I've been getting lessons in conversational misdirection. Saw you coming. Saw you _miles_ away. But why shouldn't I be listening to Dylan in the near future?"

 _Because I killed maybe twelve of you today. Well, technically it was only three but mannequins don't melt straight away. You can use them more than once before they get… like, puddles. They sort of scorch first, and then then go black and even with the melting, they tend to lose an arm or the head or something first before they… It's not a big deal, I've just never worked with fire before, not on any scale, I did street stuff, okay? All this big prop illusionism, it's new to me, so that's the only reason it happened. And I totally got better as the day went on. Just out of practice, not because the third mannequin had a face drawn on it with your plum lipstick and was wearing… that reminds me, you know that black jacket you like with the velvet collar? Well, you_ used _to like it, okay?_

"Ignoring me won't work," Lula smirks, over the sound of drawers opening and closing, the closet door, the bedsheets.

They need something, some sign or codeword, some way of telling each other when silence is easy or intentional, and when there's something more underneath it.

"You're going to be totally fine in Rome, okay?"

"Did… Did he say something about me? About this morning? Because it's a really sharp drop, and they're not the easiest shoes to stand in. I mean, who cares if I twist my ankle so long as I don't break it, right?"

" _No_ , no, that's not- Volume, by the way, don't blow your cover."

"Oh, I pick up my phone when I decide I need to yell."

"Anyway," but he's losing her, losing track of himself, muttering as he pulls a bulging suitcase out of the base of the closet. "Not what I meant. What I'm trying to say is…"

He's undone the zippers. The bulge bounces up at him, all straps and chiffons and, every so often, like a needle lost inside a cushion, a lethal stiletto heel. Midsentence, Jack forgets he's even speaking. "You found lingerie, didn't you?"

"I don't even know."

"Then it's definitely lingerie." Like she's coaxing a dog, "Come on, fella. Get out of there. C'mon. I don't hear zippers, Jack."

"Wait a sec."

" _No_. Steal her food, yes, invade her privacy, fine. Get off the panties."

But there's something wrong. The open suitcase sits in front of him, talking, trying to tell him something, but all this pointless stuff, overflowing, everywhere, is drowning it out. "Please, _please_ , for just one second, take a bite of your cake and get out of my ear – _I'm sorry_ , there's no nicer way to say that."

And no nice reply, it seems; she does what he asks, but without acknowledgement. It knots up Jack's stomach, but he'll pay her back later. And it's just one less voice in the noise. At first it isn't making any difference. Maybe he made a mistake and there's nothing to see, however close he looks.

But he used to know these things. Dig back, and keep digging past what anybody knows about him now, and Jack was good at this stuff once. He used to _enjoy_ it. Then again, you can make yourself enjoy anything when your rent or your next meal depends on it. It doesn't seem so much like a skill of its own now that he doesn't depend on it to survive. It's still something he's good at. It's just that shame is a thing that kicks in along with comfort.

You can't blame him, then, if he's got mixed feelings over finding he still knows these things.

The anomaly screaming at him isn't in the case itself, it's in the lid. Jack grabs it over close. There's a zippered pocket but nothing inside except basics – painkillers, tanning lotion, make-up remover. But beneath Jack's hand, beneath the lining, it's not just the hard inside of the lid. Changes in texture, bundles that might be paper. Jack makes a fist and pulls. The instinct is good – the whole lining tears away.

"Was… Was that Velcro?" Lula doesn't want to interrupt, but she can't help herself. "Now I'm interested. Tell me about Velcro, what are we looking at? Some kind of tearaway or something?"

Jack can't answer right away. Staring at what he's found, stuck in a moment repeating like a scratched record. His lips part but his mouth is dry and he has to force it, to really think about forming words. "We need to leave. I need to put things back and… and we need to leave."


	10. Chapter 10

There's no table at the studio, but there's an old knife-thrower's rotator. Taken off its engine and propped on two sawhorses, it would make a passable substitute if it wasn't for the mechanics hanging underneath. See, no one really throws the knife anymore. The knife is palmed, or flung over the shoulder into the wings on the draw-back. The hilt you see thunking into the board is actually fired through from the other side. It stops so hard and the thrower must throw so convincingly that the eye is tricked into believing the impact must have come from a knife which has instead vanished.

A fun and interesting fact, maybe, but the upshot for those gathered tonight is that every time one of them moves, a knee or a shin meets a spring or a bar. There are bruises already, and already one hilt showing through the surface. Quietly, simply because she was in a position to do it, Lula has caught one of those mechanisms between her knees. It keeps her coffee from splattering over the edges of the cup anytime the rotator gets jolted.

They probably ought to invest in a table.

Avoiding the knife-hilt standing proud between them, Jack skims his phone across to Dylan. Watching him swipe through the photographs he took of Dasko's suitcase, "This is bad, right?"

"Well, if it's what you say it is, it's hardly good," Merritt mutters.

"What do you mean, if it's what he says it is?"

"Oh, here she comes… Jack, you oughtn't take things so personally, even by proxy."

The roll of his eyes is more than Lula is willing to put up with. "No, what does that mean? Were you there? You haven't even seen the pictures yet. I have. It's the same blueprints, the ones we were shown last week. _Exactly_ the same ones." Feeling incredulous eyes creep over her, "I have a photographic memory. How do you think I caught up on a year of you guys rehearsing in four weeks?"

Jack barely hears them. He asked a question, and asked it of a specific person. He asked said question of said person because he wants said person to answer it. He wants an answer he can be sure of, and which he can trust. They have bickered beneath his notice, across the centre of the table like a wall. Now, at the corner of his eye, he sees Merritt's mouth start to open again and knocks through between them. " _Dylan_."

"They're the same blueprints."

He doesn't say it as a condemnation or a cataclysm. That's the way it's taken, certainly, but it's not how Dylan means it. If they were really listening they might have caught this but the implications, the possibilities, that gets to them before subtlety ever could. Around the table, their little part of the world is ended and implodes. Lula with her head in her hands, and you know she's mourning the show itself, the opportunity to perform, more than anything else. Merritt, for his part, launches a sudden and sharp interrogation of Danny, who says absolutely nothing in reply. Given most of the questions seem to be indirectly addressed to Rebecca Dasko – what she knows, why now, why show herself, what her game is – there's probably not much he _could_ say.

Somebody shifts a knee. A knife hilt jams through the table, and a collective hiss of shock stops the squabbling - for less than a second.

Across the table, there's Jack still standing, wanting to know what they do now. Waiting for an answer again, which is charming, really, Dylan's very flattered, but he wishes those eyes weren't on him quite so intently, because he's trying to think.

In truth, he's having the self-same problem Jack did when the suitcase was in front of him. Dylan's not so familiar with it, hasn't got the same instincts to combat it. Swiping through the pictures, something is trying to make itself obvious – like an anagram, where the shapes of the word are right but you can't force sense out of the sounds.

At first glance, it's pretty terrible; Rebecca seems to know more about Rome than some of the Horsemen do. Not just the building schematics he showed them last week, the site, the area, the street map around it. She's got the story too, the newspaper clippings, the web pages, the names of the families.

Dylan hasn't told anybody about that part yet. How can you eavesdrop on something that's never been spoken aloud?

The papers in Rebecca Dasko's suitcase seem damning at first. Then you realize, she's got the location, she's got the context. But she hasn't got word-one on gas canisters or hydraulic traps or collapsible tenting. Nothing on quick-changes or colours. Nothing on the days of set-up, the infiltration, the work still to be done even before they leave Paris. Rebecca's got the stage, fine. But she's got no magic to put on it.

"It's not us." It's only when the argument stops that Dylan realizes just how much fire his voice cut through. They barely seem to have heard him, only that he spoke, and look to him now to repeat in the broken-glass silence. "It's not us. Wherever she got this information from, and it's worrying that she got it from anywhere and that there's anybody she could have gotten it from, it wasn't from any of us." As best he can explain it, "She's got information none of you have yet, and none of the information she might have found by stalking and spying."

Merritt is just swivelling back to Danny for another volley, or maybe just to demand some opportunity to question Dasko himself, but Dylan interrupts, "You're sure, one-hundred-percent, that those damn…-" One hand seizing against his will, trying not to grit his teeth, " _clowns_ knew nothing? Beyond doubt, you're certain?"

Danny's only contribution to the meeting so far; "Wait, the clowns are real?" He might as well contribute nothing at all, because all eyes fall to Merritt, the slow, easy swing of his head. The smirk is what it always is, but the eyes above are narrow, ready to laugh or tear out a throat. The distinction between the two might be the bat of an eyelid.

"Now really, that shows an _extraordinary_ lack of faith, considering you sent me after them in the first place."

Not giving an inch, "Sorry, does that mean you're sure or you aren't?"

"No connection between the clowns and Becky. In fact, all the clowns are interested in is _you_. I'm not even Petey's favourite Horseman anymore."

"Don't take it personal," Jack tells him.

"Now, be fair, young Wilder; your skills as a B-and-E man were never called into question."

An outsider watching Jack might say that nothing changes. Outwardly nothing does. But to know him at all is to know the unseen reactions, the nuclear force of it, all the rawest nerves being razored all at once – the history nerve, the crime nerve and, more powerful than any other, the _kid_ nerve. He's done. He's done and his fists are clenching and he's already on his feet. It's far too easy to Jack to turn for the door. And every step, he knows the stronger thing to do is stay, to find the power in enduring but honestly? Right at this moment? Jack doesn't trust himself to be here. "Call me when you figure out what you're going to do. That's how it works anyway, right?"

Dylan breathes deep to call after him. But all that air just hisses out of him again.

In the dead after the door dropping closed, Lula murmurs, "Not cool."

"Still here, princess? I thought you two might flounce out as a pair."

"Oh, not a chance," and she is all challenge, all strength, doing what she knows Jack wanted to and couldn't find in himself. For both of them, "First off, I am literally and figuratively the only thing keeping this table from flipping over. Second, I know an intentional asshole act when I see one. Why did you do that?"

Merritt flounders. The truth is so ready, and the lies that spring immediately to mind all shade too far towards the cruel. He pushed it already with Jack, got to the very edge of what he's comfortable with. He wants to ask Dylan to save him and knows he can't. But the slightest cut of his eyes, not even a glance, and he gets his wish.

"Danny," Dylan snaps. Danny jolts out of his silence and sees what he's needed for; Dylan is holding the table's edge. When Danny does the same the top is entirely steady. They ease it more solidly over the sawhorses.

Lula's lips part when she sees their intention – she's not the only thing holding up the table anymore. She stares, blank and uncomprehending, at Dylan.

"Go after Jack," he says. Hardly above a grumble, words running into each other, grudging at even this small insult. "Please. And… And try and settle him about the B-and-E thing, because… Well, honestly, I might need him for another one."

Lula stands. As brusque and cool as she can be, she swipes down her skirt to cover up the mechanical hinges printed dark on the insides of her thighs and tosses her hair. She snatches Jack's phone from beneath Dylan's hand before she leaves.

"Sorry," says Merritt, once she's out the door.

"No, it's fine."

"Really, I thought she'd go. Probably if she hadn't been propping the table up-"

"No, honestly, you did more than enough. I appreciate it."

Danny watches, eyes flicking back and forth between the only two speakers left. All the strange hardness that was on them just a minute ago – Danny put it down to general stress, long days, lingering hangovers, bad news, the pressure of expected answers and having none to give – is gone. The same feeling he had at the shed this afternoon, the feeling that a game has been played around him and beneath his notice and over his head, that ugly feeling is back. Up until now he's been content to sit back and hold his tongue. Had the meeting been allowed to continue as it should have, the rest would have done more than enough talking to cover his portion. Not that he's got anything to add. He didn't even set eyes Rebecca tonight. He got her out of the hotel by stealing her passport from the front desk and dropping it at a train station halfway across town. He stayed only until he was sure it had been handed in, not long enough to chance crossing paths with her.

The short version? Circumstances appear to be conspiring to isolate Danny in the studio, and the route Jack and Lula just took is beginning to look very good.

Merritt glances at his watch. "Long enough, you think?"

"Yeah, she ought to be out the door by now." Merritt tips his hat and rolls out of his seat toward the door. Dylan calls out, "I owe you one."

"See, you want me to say, no, no, consider it payback for being around last night but… But yeah, you do."

It ought to be noted, Dylan let go of the table as soon as it was steady on the saw horses. Danny has yet to let go.

"I told you," he begins, and would not deny the touch of desperation, "I don't know anything. What could I possibly know? She talked about _anything_ but us, and it was deliberate, it was _so_ deliberate, like she chose every word to be unrelated, _unrelatable_ , to us, to this, even to magic. Dylan, what could I possibly have found out? Because trust me, I like this less than anyone else. I _know her._ What could I know? Seriously. Tell me. Tell me what I could know and how I could know that, I'll go and do it. I'll go now."

Dylan sits back, blinks off the sudden ferocity. Maybe it's just that Danny was so quiet before. Danny's never quiet. "Well," he says slowly, and in his most calming voice, "If you'll shut up for a second, let's discuss it."

"…What?"

"You know nothing, we get it. You're like that general off _Kelly's Heroes_."

"Colonel. From _Hogan's Heroes_."

"Ah, now _there's_ the needy smartass I know and tolerate." Danny sighs, looks away. But Dylan knows all too well what fake apathy looks like. He's been practicing, in case the clowns show up again. He knows and sees through it, knows he's made an impression tonight. "Danny, I'm not asking you what you know. I'm asking what you can find out. And please, make good use of Lula. You saw the work that just went into making sure she'll give you all the help you need."


	11. Chapter 11

The problems reach back years and push into the weeks to come. They are many and pervasive, and however you might wish to state the situation, you'll arrive at some variant of this; it is no good night to be a Horseman.

Which is a rare enough thing, certainly, but no less potent and portentous for that. More so, in fact; when you're so used to comfort and camaraderie, the broken nights are very cold indeed. Out of wallowing and worrying and the awful re-enactments a mind will insist on inflicting upon itself, in the moments of clarity, each of them will find the same conclusion somewhere before dawn. Jack finds it on the bare white ceiling the third time he jolts out of his sleep, Lula in the dark behind her eyelids the third time she pretends he didn't wake her. Merritt's is in the brutal snap of hanging up a telephone. For Dylan, it is hidden, written on the back of Alma's neck and only revealed by a scented shake of her hair. And Danny got it first, got it right away, got it standing in the studio. When he had been helped without even having to ask, and so efficiently, Danny realized hours ago how lucky they are, when any problem shared might be considered a problem split five ways.

But spare a thought, if you've got one to spare, for the other casualties of this unkind evening. So maligned, so peripheral and out of focus, so misunderstood on any occasion they have dared to step forward, take a moment to appreciate – this is no good night to be a clown either.

After their moment with Merritt McKinney earlier – neither of them has come out and said it, but both agree the magician shaded towards _mean_ – they retreated. The mood had fallen too low, and the energy level.

They might have gone back to work, and in performing and in other people's laughter they might have found some of their joy again. But it doesn't work that way. Clowning is a one-way street. It's not just unprofessional, for a clown to get their glow from an external source, it's against the rules. A true clown can find themselves in real trouble even showing their face in public without at least a glimmer in their eye, and are expected to keep this up without relying on so much as a sugar rush.

Crepes don't count. They're in Paris; Quinn was taking in a full experience of the culture, and it amused the seller to hear it ordering out from behind the mask and down from Petey's shoulders. And as to Petey's ice cream, well, it was very hot inside the costume, Quinn was worried about him, necessity is the mother of quiet little contraventions of minor rules when there's nobody around to see. Also the crepes were incredible.

The point is, after the crepes it was all downhill. McKinney really killed off the buzz.

And it had to be him, didn't it? The tale about him being Petey's favourite was not patter, it was not a lie. Though he never expressed as much, Quinn knew he was excited about meeting the guy. And for it to go the way it did…

In a bundle of sweatpants and hotel bathrobe, Quinn sits against the pillows on the creaking bed and looks across at the bathroom door. According to the iPad propped on its knees, Petey's been in there half an hour now. "Have you drowned?" it calls, over the noise of the shower.

The noise cuts out. A second later Petey's head appears around the door, a hand cupped to his ear, _What?_

"You're going to prune up like one of them cats that have no hair and all my sympathy."

The first sign he gives in reply is unequivocal and, in Quinn's experience, universal. It requires no more than the middle finger of one hand. Following on, adding the first finger and thumb for at least a pretence of eloquence, _Okay, Mom_.

"Don't you backtalk me, young man. You know how your skin gets under that greasepaint…" Trying to look away, to be casual and disinterested, "That guy's an asshole anyway, everybody knows it. You have to get, like, two-thirds down his Wikipedia page before you find anything that even suggests nice…"

Another appearance at the door, and this time there's more fervour in the hands, _You shut up,_ and the pointing finger that makes Quinn the target quivers. Quinn raises both hands, showing them empty and harmless, and the door gets slammed to. It has no intention, professionally or otherwise, of scratching at a raw nerve. There are other contemporary performers who would disagree, but Quinn considers it bad clowning, if you can't raise a smile except by making someone else feel worse. Quinn considers that weak.

And besides, we're talking about Petey here.

Actually, if Quinn had Merritt McKinney here in the room, that rule about backhanded jokes might be casually abandoned for the night. Quinn would scalp that mesmeric prick right now, given the opportunity. And maybe a plunger, since the scalp itself provides absolutely nothing it might grip onto and tug.

As bloody-minded humour goes, the plunger gag actually makes Quinn smile. Tonight, however, is clearly not the night. It files the line away for some more opportune moment.

When Petey finally emerges, they don't return to the topic of disappointing heroes. Quinn begins, before he's even across the room. "I googled Rebecca Dasko. She's not even her own first result, there's this pretty famous doctor who's written tonnes to papers and you have to get past her profiles everywhere. I actually thought it was her at first, but check out what I found on page two." He sits on the edge of the bed and Quinn slides him the tablet. Grabbing the towel hanging around his neck, it dries off his hair, rough, shaking his head until he gives up trying to read. "Are you smiling again? Come on, man, all I can see is shoulder, give me something." Petey turns enough to show an intentionally grim baring-of-teeth, and that shoulder gets shoved hard. "You better cheer up. If you don't cheer up, I'll have to hurt you so you'll have something to be sad about."

Indicating the iPad, _Will this cheer me up?_

"All it says is that Rebecca Dasko played assistant to one Mr J. Daniel Atlas before he made it big with that live TV event." Idly scratching a trace of white paint from behind his ear, "Basically he left her on the stage when he went street-level."

 _Does that help us at all?_

"Not in any way. We're still going to die."

A softening, relenting, hands held out flat, _Calm down_. More complex again, _They won't kill us_.

"Oh, well, you would know. _I've_ never disappointed them before."

One sharp turn and Quinn is knocked back across the bed, both punished and making room for Petey to sit next to it. Side by side, he puts the screen in front of both of them and nods at it. When Quinn doesn't move, another nod. "I'm not calling them. _You_ call them."

 _Fine_ , and Petey grabs the screen, props it up to leave both hands free.

"Wait, really? See, big guy, this is why we make such a good te-"

 _Tell them about that dick McKinney_ – the name, purely between the two of them, is expressed by sweeping a hand smoothly over the skull from front to back – _We're here. He's here. Mom and Dad might let us do something to him._

Quinn snatches back the tablet. "I'll call them. You're going to make it sound like we did something wrong which, remember, and remember this at all times, we didn't. We tried hard. We did everything we could, and were refused at every turn." Petey nods fervently, jaw set. "We're innocent. Shrike. Shrike is the problem."

Together, the big hand guiding (and very slightly forcing) the little one, Quinn begins the video call, and breathing deep, swallowing nausea, waits for a connection.

After a minute, the sound of the line changes, but the box on screen stays dark. Far away and muffled, "Hello? Children? What… I… I can see you but there's nothing in my little box, is that right? Can I see you but not me?"

"Doc, it's Quinn. You can hear me okay, right?"

"Oh, I can hear you just fine, and what a _charming_ ensemble you're wearing-"

A deeper, gruffer voice cuts over Doc's, "Shut up and ask the kid what's wrong with the pictures." The sound of that voice and Petey stops laughing. Quinn fixes its smile, makes sure it stays bright and wide, "Hi, Panty," and elbows Petey so he remembers to wave. "Look, so long as you can see us and hear us, and we can hear you, it's fine."

"Yeah, I guess," the gruff voice grunts. "Probably be a short call anyway. All you gotta tell us, when might we expect a visit from dear little Dyllie?"

"…About that-"

"Oh?" and Doc is all mild with concern on the phone but they can both picture his face, the hard edges, him reaching for the slapstick bracketed under his table, "Is there a problem?"

Petey shakes his head fast, cutting the air with both hands, every emphatic 'no' that can be expressed without speaking tumbling out of him, getting caught up and confused until Quinn doesn't quite know what he's saying. "Yes," it interrupts. "But not with us. I think… I mean, this is just what I saw when we spoke to him, but he might be… Could be one of those-"

"Spit it out!" Panty roars.

"He's a coulroph-"

"Young clown!" Doc cries, "Finish that word and you will clean your own mouth out with soap and Petey will send me pictures to verify."

"He thinks we all have pointy teeth and eat little kids in sewers or something, okay?" Panty mumbles something about 'goddamn King' and spits, but Quinn is taking advantage of their shock, faster than any barking it has done in all these days, "We went to him direct and we tried to get in through May and McKinney both, but they're totally switched off, there's some other issue they're dealing with, a woman called Rebecca, so there's just no way for us to get through, unless you want to give us the message and we'll make him listen maybe but other than that I don't see any way-"

"What woman?!" Panty roars.

"Rebecca Dasko, she was Atlas' assistant back in the old days? There's some problem and they're all hung up on it. I guess because we showed up at the same time they thought we'd know something, but we don't, so all we know is that there's a problem."

The silence that falls is so complete that Quinn checks they haven't lost the connection, that out of pure terror it didn't reach out and cut the line. But the connection is fine. If it listens carefully, it can still hear them, muttering now, cutting Petey and Quinn out of the conversation. It turns the volume all the way up. Catches only fragments, _In motion now_ , and _Too late_ and _See the arrogant shit after Rome._ Quinn can hear them hissing, and Panty slamming a fist the size and colour of a baked ham down on the table.

That's when it jumps and gabbles again, "Guys, are you going to murder us? We can't see your faces to guess from that, so you have to help us out."

"Children! Oh, my children!" Doc gushes, "Nothing of the sort! We're very sure you did your level best. Aren't we, Panty?"

A growl, "Suppose so…"

"Tell you what?" Doc grins, "Why don't you two scamps stay in Paris a while? A heritage city for our kind, you know. I think our sweet Pedrolino will enjoy it especially."

It's quite a shift from thinking they might be killed or, worse, ousted. Quinn needs a second to recalibrate, and doesn't quite accept the reality of the offer until Petey jabs its arm for attention. Both thumbs jabbing at the edges of his chest; Quinn has always loved the signing for 'vacation', because he looks so excited.

" _Go-od_ ," Doc coos. "Have a _wonderful_ time, take _lots_ of pictures. Now –" And here his voice takes that hardness again, that reaching-for-a-weapon tone, "Toodle-oo." The call stops so abruptly Quinn jumps back, dropping the tablet on the bed.

"Did… did we just get a free vay-kay for _not_ completing the task we were sent here with?"

Petey is all delight, open-mouthed grinning, two thumbs up.

Well, if that's not a way to salvage a horrible evening, then there isn't any way to salvage a horrible evening. Yes, Quinn could be impressed with this. Quin could sit back now and tell itself that this great boon has come to them because it did such a good job of explaining the situation, sleep very well tonight knowing that tomorrow morning will be brighter than today and will belong entirely to them. They could have fun in Paris. Like Doc said, there's a lot to learn here, about their fated vocation. They could learn a new skill and pick up some history and…

"Does that sound right to you?"

The thumbs again, reiterating, and teeth gritted in the smile now, _Yes. Vacation. Don't ruin this._

"…You hear what he said about Rome? I only got a little."

Petey's hands are over his ears, over his eyes, over his mouth, and then jabbing his chest again. _Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, take a holiday_.

"You know what I think we should do?" Petey points at Quinn, then at his own head, then crossing the air in denial again. The meaning is clear and Quinn is unamused. "Me _not_ thinking is a _worse_ idea. Now ask me what I think we should do."

… _What do you think we should do?_

"If, and I'm not saying they will but _if_ , the Horsemen go to Rome, I think we also should go to Rome."

 _No, Quinn! Vacation! They said stay in Paris, Paris vacation, us, time off, vacation, fun, relax_

"I'm not saying we don't stay in Paris. We stay in Paris. And then we go to Rome and come back and stay in Paris and if anybody asks if there was a break in the middle where we stayed in Rome, well, I just pretend I don't have no tongue either!"

Petey glares. _Rude_.

"Okay, I'm sorry. But promise me we'll go to Rome."


	12. Chapter 12

By three pm, Rebecca has eaten three sit-down meals and stopped twice for snacks. All the shopping must make for hungry work. Of twelve boutiques, she has emerged from eight with bags, and Lula can't help but suspect that smaller purchases from the other four were perhaps just tucked away in the enormous crocodile purse. With thousands and thousands of euros racked up swinging on either arm, Rebecca is Parisian parody – white skirt suit and dark glasses, speaking poor French to baffled waiters and shop staff, gradually increasing the volume when they don't get it.

Lula snaps a quick rear view of this ludicrous peacocking - cell phone in one hand, iced pastry in the other, three-inch heel-clicking through a tiled arcade, and sends it to Jack. _Starting to get why everybody hates her_.

It's not the first message she's sent, but she's hoping it'll be the first he replies to.

Rebecca pauses to study the jewellery in a store window so Lula turns the other way, positioning herself to watch her reflection. It's just unfortunate that the window she was at is that of a specialist tobacconist, and she finds herself feigning interest in the carvery of pipes and small piles of shredded leaf on brass plates. More unfortunate still that she has unwittingly joined an older man who stinks of the stuff, and who seems to think he has found a pretty young kindred spirit. Lula tightens when he reaches into his jacket, but all he brings out is a cigarette case, and opens it to present her with a neat legion of hand-rolled cancer.

Lula weighs polite refusal against other chances at escape, gauging each by the amount of attention it might attract and the possible outcomes. It's all done in an eye-blink. Then she leans toward the case, delicately sniffs. With mild, cagy interest, " _Egyptien_?"

" _D'Argentine._ "

At the corner of her eye, she spots Rebecca moving on, so she wrinkles her nose. " _Merci, m'sieur, mais non."_ See, polite refusal would have worked, but snooty refusal works better. Lula's exit is smooth and natural. It's also unhurried, with a glance back at the window as if she would have liked to stay longer and only the company prevents her, allowing her to keep a safe distance from her target.

 _Adaptability_ , she thinks to herself, _that's the key to this following thing._ _That, and knowing_ two _facts about every possible topic, like that Egyptian tobacco is prized and production is small-scale, and that Argentina is in the top ten global cancer-growers._ A few steps later, and she is quite unable to hold the thought at bay, it comes unbidden, Lula's got nothing to do with it, you can't possibly call it arrogance or vanity because the thought drops down out of nowhere, like a lightning bolt, the thought comes from God or somewhere, definitely not from Lula, _Damn, I'm good_. _I am just the best little stalker I know._

And since this thought definitely comes down out of divine light or somebody's Buddha, it counts as the second time today she's been told so. The proud, comforting voice speaking to her now bears no resemblance to the first, though; Danny's mood hadn't improved much overnight.

By way of example, he opened the door to just Lula and, before 'hello' or any other more traditional word of greeting, "I thought Jack was coming. Much as _stalking_ is the first talent you ever proved to us you had-"

It wasn't a question Lula really wanted to get into. Really, she still doesn't. She tells herself now what she told Danny this morning, "Jack's not coming." Then she produced her wig options from either pocket. "You can, however, pick between Meredith and Cleo."

"…I'll take the redhead."

"Thought you might."

Lula (or, technically, Cleo) could blow her cover giggling when she remembers the look on his face. That was the beginning of it, you know; that was the spark to the kindling, and Lula has been on _fire_ this entire day. Really; she hasn't put a foot wrong in Cleo's _tres chic_ green velvet ankle boots, she hasn't so much as smudged her eyeliner, hasn't uttered one wit-free word.

It's just difficult to get excited when there's no one around to witness it. Even then, there's really only one person she'd really want to share this with. In fact she _has_ been sharing it with him, through the constant messages, the pictures. She's even left a voicemail, pretending to make a call while Rebecca was eating. All in French, pausing occasionally as if he'd answered her. Now she can't even remember what she said but she knows she tried to be funny. _Please laugh_ , waiting for the sound of it, even though she knew he wasn't there.

Jack's phone is still on the kitchen counter where she left it last night. And after tossing and turning all night, he wasn't around when Lula woke up.

 _Just think_ , she thinks and thinks hard, so that maybe he'll pick it up, _if I can be this excellent even under the crippling anxiety of not even knowing where you are, just think what heights I could reach if you would text me back._ _You realize, don't you, how selfish it is to keep me from reaching my full potential?_ _And you realize too, that you are getting absolutely_ none _for the next mon-Ah, that's a lie, we both know that's a lie, never mind…_

Rebecca turns down a side street and Lula leaves her attempts at psychic development for another day.

She finds to her delight that she might actually get to sit down for a while. After all the purchase-proud pavement-pounding, Rebecca is treating herself to a movie. A little theatre, the old kind with movable letters on the marquee bars and folding gates on the entrance, just opening for the afternoon. She buys her ticket and, after lingering a moment at a patisserie window, Lula rolls over and does the same. There's no difficulty choosing the right show, since the lonely old movie house has only one screen.

They're showing Buster Keaton movies, three in a row.

Rebecca is in the third row, in the centre seat. Her bags are in the seats either side of her. Lula edges up the side aisle and sits near the back. The gentle slope of the rows gives her a slight elevation. Enough, anyway, to see Rebecca take a notebook out of her purse, a pen out of the spine. She squashes some of her boutique bags down flat to make a space she can lean on, rustling while she settles.

It's about the only thing all day that's made Lula's brow furrow. But she moves on fast; there's just time for one more text before the lights go down. _Professionally obliged to watch Buster Keaton._ _Awesome day._ _Tell me you're safe so I can enjoy it._

There are only a handful of other people at the screening. Lula clocks all of them, assesses their potential involvement. She's maybe not entirely so thorough as she ought to be; hard to concentrate, when the belly laughs keep coming, when there's a guy on a ladder sticking straight up from the back of a speeding car and a bridge coming up. Much as she'd like to find out something, to crack this stupid Rebecca problem so everybody can make friends and be happy again, Lula's pretty grateful that the two old pals shaking hysterically in front of her and the students in the back row and the woman in the wheelchair eating a baguette sandwich down in the front never approach Rebecca, or even look too long at her.

There are a few suspicious glances, maybe. In the beginning, Lula thought it was just all the bags, and the fact that Rebecca has kept her dark glasses on.

After a while, something more disturbing becomes apparent – Rebecca's eyes are fixed on the screen. Her hand never stops scribbling, scrawling notes that flip page after page, white flashes in the dark. But she isn't laughing. Not once. Our Hero is stuck in fresh road tar, swiftly losing sight of the pretty lady who led him to walk through it, and there's not so much as a shudder in Rebecca's shoulders. She doesn't move, except for the hand that holds the pen.

Tight and quiet with terror, hiding her phone under her jacket, Lula's next message is for Danny.

 _This woman is broken_.

Mere seconds later, his answer buzzes against her thigh. _Not responsible._ _Anything?_

 _Wine with lunch?_

 _This is France_.

The students in the back row sigh and click their tongues and Lula hides her phone again.

When the features end, she makes sure she's out first. Good move for deflecting any suspicion; how can you be following if you're ahead? Lula turns one way down the street and glances back to see Rebecca turning in the other. It's fine; she comes out the other end of the alley and starts immediately toward the next corner, quickening her steps for the first time. She places herself on the other side of the adjoining street until she can see Rebecca pass and fall in behind her again.

By the way, and it's something Lula really feels needs to be stated, this is _not_ the kind of stalking she engaged in before she was brought onto the team. Danny was wrong about that, and if she hadn't had her vengeance with the redhead gag and if he hadn't already been vulnerable, she would have made sure and corrected him on that. What he _may_ have been referring to is the _scrapbook_ , but so far as she knows that's still her own little secret will remain so for _at least_ another year. At least. Will remain so until Lula feels enough time has passed for them to laugh about it. And not in the way they would laugh if they knew about it now.

Danny was wrong about something else too; Cleo. Meredith would have been a lot more comfortable. Not only does Meredith fall in two long blonde wings she can hide behind just by dipping her head, but Lula obviously hasn't been keeping up with her wig care. Honestly she doesn't need them that often. But sometime soon, after Rome when there's free time again, she's going to have to spend a long and gentle afternoon with Cleo, because there is _something_ , something sharp and aggravating, on the edge of the woven cap, like a piece of straw, scratching around behind her ear.

Lula ignores the itch as long as she can, but eventually, and turning off into another side street where she won't be observed helps, she can't anymore. Fast and brutal, still walking, she reaches up and grinds at it with the side of her hand.

"Why don't you just lose the wig?"

The voice comes bright and sudden from her other side. Lula stands suddenly straight and turns. There, at the single sidewalk table of a minute café no wider than its own front door, Rebecca is already seated and engrossed in the menu.

All those chocolate raisins she put away at the movies must have been a step too close to health food.

Again, Lula weighs a lot of options in not a lot of time. And at the end of her considerations, she reaches up and begins removing the pins in the wig cap. A few casual steps close the gap and she drops into the chair opposite her quarry.

 _Depending what happens,_ she thinks, _maybe dance around this part when we tell it to Danny_.

Dark glasses still in place, it's with great dark insect eyes that Rebecca studies her, while Lula is gathering pins between her teeth and can't speak. "I'm glad it's you. You're the only one I still want to know more about. See, you replaced the same woman I once replaced. You have to feel sorry for Reeves; she never seems to last at anything. But what I mean, you see why you interest me. I wonder what else we maybe have in common."

 _Certainly not our appreciation of silent comedy_ , but by the time Lula grabs up her pins and drops them into a pocket, the time to say it has passed. She is stuffing Cleo inside her jacket when Rebecca goes on, "Who sent you for me? Shrike? Or was it my Daniel? I bet it was; Shrike would have thought of something a little less classic. And I have to say, it was hours before I accepted that you're all on your own. That just seems… Well, silly."

The single waiter of this tiny establishment joins them then. In the same ridiculous French she's been braying all day, Rebecca orders. Extensively. Lula's got time to fumble around the base of her purse for a hairbrush and believe her when she tells you, she finds a spotted handkerchief, three carefully wrapped slips of flash paper and a deck of cards before she finds that. Whether or not Rebecca deliberately picks the items on the menu with the most words to mispronounce, Lula wouldn't like to guess.

When the waiter turns his attention to her she asks only for a black coffee. Then, to Rebecca, "You know how it is. _Trapdoors_."

"You poor little pigeon. That's all you are to them, you know, is a pigeon, or a rabbit. Folded up and stuffed in a secret compartment. A prop, really, set dressi-" She stops because Lula is smiling, shaking her head, just the edge of a laugh. "No? Not the right course?"

"That whole Yoko Factor thing, sowing the seeds of discontent, turning us against each other?" Lula keeps her smile in place despite the sting, remembering last night. "Yeah, somebody in the group has to _like_ you for that to work."

"Damn. You know, I never thought of that?"

"It's okay, sweetie, we've all got learning to do. Hey, you know what the hot new technique is, all the kids are doing it? _Honesty_. Think about it; I can keep following you for days. I've got a really good attention span. You can have zero privacy and get to know me way too well. Or you can just tell me, now, what you're doing here."

Lula says all of this with the same gentle, carefully meaningless smile, only occasionally glancing away from brushing out her matted hair. By little pointing flicks of her finger, Rebecca shows her where she has missed stray flyaways, this one little curl that needs to be smoothed across the back of Lula's hand. Without eye contact, both absorbed in this task, "I explained to Danny just the other night. All I wanted was to congratulate him. He's done it again, hasn't he? Has he built up some crazed, paranoid fantasy, all in his own head?" Lula feels along her parting, sensing that it isn't quite straight. She turns to her reflection the café window to correct it, letting Rebecca take the brush from her hand.

Focussed on smoothing the coiling ends, Rebecca isn't looking inside. She doesn't see, as Lula does, that there's something going on, in the kitchen at the back. She doesn't see much, just the edges around the swinging door, but there seems to be some sort of altercation going on, maybe even violence.

On instinct, she keeps her mouth shut. When she's perfectly coiffed again, Lula straightens up, takes her brush back with a murmur of thanks, and they make an ever-so-delightful pair of girlfriends. They might be talking about nothing more serious than the upcoming trend for embroidered boots.

"You're not going to say a damn word, are you?" Lula simpers. Her eyes slide sideways, following the waiter back to the table. She must have been wrong about the place only having the one. Either that, or the first guy has grown a moustache since he went out back.

And simpering right back, "Not one. Not unless you want to return to the subject of how they'll never see you as any more than an assistant. And all that stuff about the assistant doing all the real work, I mean… _You and I_ know it to be true, and deep down so do they, but they'll never really let themselves believe it. Magicians are egotists, Miss May." A brief pause, while the waiter sets down tiny plate after tiny plate in front of her. Rebecca waits for her coffee before she continues, speaking over the rim, "And that includes your adorable boyfriend."

Lula stands sharply out of her chair. She would yell, except she never gets the chance; she startles the waiter, who had been trying to pass her her own cup. His jolt turns his hand sideways, slinging steaming dark coffee all down the left of Rebecca's pristine white suit. In a flurry, all hands and shocked muttering, he falls on her with his white cloth and tries to daub the stain away.

She squeals and shoves him. "Get off me!"

As the waiter retreats, Lula sighs, falters like she's just given up on the screaming match she wanted to have just seconds ago. She takes Rebecca's coffee off the table. Then, as she leaves, she stops to pat Rebecca's shoulder. "Oh, it's okay. I'm sure you bought something today you can change into." Lula gives this comfort just long enough to sit down; waits to hear Rebecca's breathing settle back towards normal.

Then she empties the second cup over the bags on the ground, "Oops," and walks away.

At the end of the street her walk turns to a run, darting to find the alley that runs to the back of the café.

Lula finds Jack, now minus moustache, backing out into alley, both hands up in front of himself. He seems to be in the middle of a protracted and important apology. Not so important, though, to keep her from shoving him hard the moment she's within range. " _Where_ have you been!? Do you have any idea how worried I've been?"

He ignores her, busy repeating to an angry chef and a bruised waiter, " _Elle a dit non_! _Que puis-je faire, elle a dit non?_ "

Lula grabs him by the hood of his jacket and drags him along with her. "What are you talking about?"

"I told them I wanted to wait on the table because I was going to propose and I wanted to surprise you."

"Oh, you're not getting out of this that easy. Not only is that a cheap shot, but I know that's bullshit because there was a fight, I saw it."

"…Never said they bought it."

Jack smiles, and Lula tries not to. After all, he's still in some very deep, very hot water. Grudging, trying to stay hard and angry, she bites, "At least tell me it worked." He pulls the coffee-stained cloth out of his pocket. It hangs long and completely limp from his hand. Lula rolls her eyes. "Don't do this. Not in public, not to me." But he continues, with all the old-fashioned flourish and mock-focus, to make something appear from an empty hand beneath a handkerchief.

It's the first trick Lula ever performed with any polish. He knows that.

She snatches the cloth away mid-trick and reveals the cell-phone still creeping out of his sleeve. "You better come up with something more impressive for handing it over to Dylan."


	13. Chapter 13

"Now I understand the rota," Alma says, her finger crooked to stroke one of the doves from the beak down the breast. They like her, the birds. They have fallen to quiet cooing. Not getting close yet, but not flustered and fluttering either. In a week's time she'll know them by the names written carefully on their ankle bands, and they'll know her too. She'll be covered, the way Dylan is now, trying to discreetly brush some of his more favoured friends off his shoulders. Little flicks of his hand, barely looking at them, _Guys, come on_ – because there are only certain amongst the Horsemen's number who will come right out and speak to the animals – _not in front of the lady_. Alma takes his silence for confusion. "The five day rota. Every fifth day, something terribly important arises. And not a scary thing either, a nice one, something you rush off to do early in the morning and come back calm. I always wondered what the rota was for."

She turns and flashes that smile at him just as he is coaxing Billy Bob (the smallest, clingiest, always the last to give up, they should have called him Jack) off the edge of his collar. "Remind me never to keep secrets from you." A flicker in the smile, and in his own heart. Alma looks away again.

 _You see what you did?_ , he hisses (internally, of course) to Billy Bob. If the bird hadn't distracted him those words never would have got any farther than the back of his brain, never mind all the way to his mouth and out.

The point is, Dylan _does_ keep secrets. So does Alma. They agreed all of this a while back now. Sadly, agreeing it never solved the problems the way they both had hoped. He almost tries to fix his mistake by telling her she ought to have asked. If she noticed and she wondered, why wouldn't she? But that was agreed too.

Don't ask – don't put me in the position where I might not be able to tell you. Don't tell – we'll each keep our own secrets. Don't ever give me anything that might come back and hurt you. Don't worry about me, and this last one they both said and they both nodded and they both kept straight faces and to this day Dylan is proud of them for that. These rules were agreed to protect them both. Without them, there's no possible way they could keep a relationship and both their jobs as well. It's unfair; the necessity really ought to make it easier to take.

Even asking Alma to feed the animals is an imposition. Maybe that sounds ridiculous, but it's a daily task she can't explain. If she's found up here, however unlikely that might be, however unimaginable the circumstances, if any connection is made between her and this place and this place and Dylan, that's it, game over.

There's no one else but all of a sudden Dylan's heart is choking him. He has to clear his throat to ask, "You're sure you can do it? Say it, if you can't. We can release the birds, most of them will find their way back. The rabbits are harder but there'll be homes for them, pretty sure, so-"

"Stop." Soft and gentle but allowing no further argument. She's not even looking at him, but at the names on ankle bands. Behind her back, Dylan takes careful hold of Billy Bob and folds him, head under wing. That's the trick of pigeons. They don't appear from nowhere, but you can make them their smallest selves, so they emerge from spaces the human eye doesn't believe could have held them. You can keep a pigeon up your sleeve, if it's young and you're careful. They're quiet and docile and, so far as Dylan can tell anyway, don't seem to mind. He makes a little package of Billy Bob and slips him into Alma's jacket for later.

He covers the drops with closeness, his hand at her waist. Her head swings back to rest against him, eyes tipped up and just a _little_ smug, "I've got a few days. I'll set it up at work. I'll say cat-sitting. They all know I don't like cats so it won't sound made-up."

"Lucky I'm not that kind of magician then, isn't it?" The smallest kiss, just darting again her forehead; he can't help it when she laughs. "Seriously. My familiar might have been a deal-breaker. Can you imagine what it would be to live with an animal you have resent for the rest of its days?"

"Especially when _you_ don't like cats either."

It's true, he doesn't. He can't remember them ever discussing it, but what does that mean? She's had this uncanny, confusing, alarming, sometimes distressing way, since the second they met and the part of him that was always acting knew he had to hate her, of knowing exactly what's in his head. And she _says_ it too, which ought to be unforgivable. But, like everything else about her, Dylan wouldn't change it for the world. It gets _incredibly_ frustrating sometimes.

Still close, he waltzes her to the door of the coop, and holds her closer still when slipping out. Explaining again that she's not to worry if somebody escapes; they're homers and they know where the food is. Paris is embarrassingly low on elderly men on benches feeding the birds from yesterday's baguettes gone stale.

"Well, imagine my surprise when I first visited New York and my cab driver was not a friendly local and did not talk incessantly about sports."

Dylan considers this revelation while he's opening out one of the deck chairs for her, next to the rabbit hutch. "…No, I think you just had a bad experience."

"He was from Bangladesh. I ended up giving _him_ directions." He'd like to laugh, really he would, and he begins to. But his heart goes out of it and he trails off. "What? It's a true story."

"No, it's not that, it's… I wanted to do this at some later point when it would be cute, but he's not happy."

"Who's not happy?"

"Come here," and, though she's halfway to sitting down, he pulls her up against him again, reaching into her pocket. He frees Billy Bob and, after the initial fluster, lets him rest on the side of his hand. Once Alma has been carefully set back down, Dylan strokes his back to calm him. "Sorry again. You can tell sometimes when they're not into it. He's only a little guy. He's not great at enclosed spaces yet. But he's getting better. Merritt, for some reason; he likes Merritt's pockets. And Lula's… Well you get the picture. He'll get there, he's just taking his time." He's talking on his way back to the coop, opening the gate only enough to edge his hand around. And though he's patient and waits, though he shakes his hand, Billy Bob holds on tight, seems content to go nowhere. "Come on, kid, don't be embarrassing. What do you think your brothers are saying about you?"

Over his shoulder, Alma cries delighted, "He looked."

"I _pointed_. They follow how you move. It's about the _only_ useful thing they do, other than keep still. Hey, do me a favour and clap loud."

"No, don't scare him!"

One last thrash of Dylan's hand finally moves the needy baby of the flock. "These are working animals," he declares. "If I get back and that dove is getting any special treatment, or the rest of the rabbits are the same size as Fluffy-"

"Don't say that in front of her!"

"Fluffy knows what she is." There's just one quiet second before they both break out laughing. Once or twice they seem to calm, to come out of it. Then they'll look at each other and go off again. It could be worse. It's silly, but it could be worse. Dylan opens out the other chair and sits next to her. It could be so much worse than this. As she trails away giggling, he clears his throat, "If it wasn't for Atlas I'd sell her off to some little French kid that'd shake her up and down by the ears." He gets his arm slapped for that, and in the crack of that they both come back to some semblance of normality.

Somewhere amongst it all, his hand has grabbed hold of hers.

"I _am_ coming back, y'know."

Simple and nodding, "I know."

"I mean it. This isn't like New York. I'm coming back. Here. To my neurotic, greedy animals. And you. I'm coming back."

Again, "I know. Do you know it?"

She's right; he's telling himself more than her. Not for the first time, there's this momentary crush of fear, that Paris was a mistake, it always was, even when he first came here, because he owed her an explanation, because there was something between them he couldn't just drop. Paris was a mistake. Paris was an act of weakness and personal indulgence and poor leadership. No, not Paris – don't sugarcoat it, don't make it easy on yourself – _Alma_ was an act of weakness. But it is momentary. It evaporates and when it's gone it leaves nothing, not a trace, not even an edge of guilt for having thought it. You only have to get guilty if you believe it and Dylan has never, ever believed those reservations.

Slowly, feeling his way along a sentiment he wouldn't have been able to express ten minutes ago, "I just want to give them all a week off, until certain things settle and others can be dealt with, and let them just… Just take the tension out of it. But I can't do that. There isn't time for that. And everything's happening on the hoof again and the last time that happened-"

"-Ended with you no longer an FBI agent."

And Jack resurrected and somehow Dylan had been separated from his team, not by a couple of hours or a few miles, but by half the globe. She doesn't state all of this but it's implied; she triggers the memory and his own still-brutalized mind does the rest. "Gosh, thanks, honey, for running me through that one again."

Her hand leapfrogs out from underneath to pat the back of his, "You're welcome, _chéri._ And there's no room at all for you to-"

"Uh-uh."

"What about if you-?"

"In two weeks?"

Alma sinks in her chair. He's sorry to have disappointed her, but there really aren't an awful lot of options. Dylan looks around to check she's not offended. What he sees isn't disgruntlement, but something more surprising; Alma reaches over the arm of the chair to the lower rabbit hutch. She undoes the latch with a minimum of fuss, reaches inside and picks up Mabel by her mottled scruff. She does this almost entirely without looking. Dylan himself has done the same, has watched almost all of the Horsemen do the same (almost – Lula is still dealing with a slight complex around rabbits). He could forget that Alma first arrived here less than twenty minutes ago.

From the long, thoughtful strokes, ears to tail, he knows she's thinking, and deeply. Not that he expects anything, not that there isn't much ground he hasn't already paced threadbare in the last couple of days… Still, if anyone is likely to find a solution… He holds his tongue, leaves her to it.

When Alma draws in breath, Dylan holds his. "Okay," she sighs, "I've decided. I want you to tell me what's the matter." He opens his mouth to argue. Just as straightforward as it was the first time, "Stop. I know what I'm saying. Tell me what the problems are."

God, it would be easy. And there is nothing, _nothing,_ Dylan wants more. You could offer him all the riches of the world right now and he'd refuse, give them all up just for this opportunity he's being given now. To turn to Alma and tell her everything that is wrong or could be wrong or feels like it might be about to go wrong – and that covers almost every other aspect of his life right now – to tell her and let her help him figure it out and fix it. Her fresh eyes and her old wisdom, he doesn't doubt for a second that she could help. Down in his jacket pocket, his hand turns Rebecca Dasko's phone over and over like the thought itself.

Think of this, if you can, and know what it is for him to close his mouth again. He opens it again only to tell her, "No. We agreed."

Alma shrugs as if it's nothing. "We agreed I wouldn't ask, but here we are."

He feels her eyes in the side of his head and is afraid to look around into them. She reaches out and turns him by the chin so he doesn't have a choice. Dylan considers, reconsiders, hits a wall and starts again. Lips parting, he breathes in deep.


	14. Chapter 14

" _La scimmia è sul ramo_."

She's a very slightly overweight woman, not old yet, but too old to look young. She favours practical clothing, comfortable and occasionally oversized, but always of as good a quality as her salary will allow and every item has something to recommended it aesthetically. Taste without flash. From time to time, to combat headaches, she wears glasses with mock-tortoiseshell frames. She doesn't smoke, drinks alcohol only at family events. After all, her voice is her living. She takes good care of it, and great pride in it, smooth and classic as the morning's first cappuccino.

Her name is Antonella Nicolodi. It says so on the back of CD case.

Yes, over the past nine days, Merritt has gotten to know the eternally calm narrator of _Learn Italian In A Week_ very well.

She – Antonella, Annie he calls her sometimes – repeats, as she always does, " _La scimmia è sul ramo_."

And Merritt, ever the apt and obedient pupil, responds in kind, "La cinema is suing Rambo."

He makes sure to say it right up loud, and he keeps his eyes shut too, head settled back against the passenger seat of the van. He does this because the window is open and Jack and Lula are standing off to his left. If they think he can't hear them, Merritt might pick up something from the conversation.

"It's fifteen hours from Paris to Rome," she's saying. "And that's no stops, in good traffic, neither of which will happen-"

"So he can practice his Italian-"

"And it's going to be even longer if the two of you get lost and, considering the New Jersey turnpike incident-"

"You're never letting me move on from that, are you?"

"It's not the part where you were going the wrong way that bugs me… Well, okay, it _is_ , but that gets blown out of the water by the fact that you actually crossed the border. Like, the fact that it took you ten hours to get anywhere didn't give it away. The _passports_ didn't give it away. The way the gas station girl pronounced vowels was the only thing that told the two of you you were in Canada. How does that even-"

"Is this relevant right now?"

"Let the B&E thing go." Merritt nods sagely. Yes. That's absolutely what Jack should do. Merritt doesn't often agree with Lula on these little social quibbles – she's a forgiving soul and tends to favour an easy life over any sense of honour or justice – but on this one occasion, well, Merritt would have to say the lady knows her stuff. You don't have to think too hard about the possible problems of transporting a vanload of rather-difficult-to-explain mechanics, equipment and stock across the Alps with a guy who hates your guts before you reach some pretty grim conclusions. It's been a little over a week now and though things haven't been _too_ bad, though some little moving on has definitely been done, fifteen hours is a long time for frost to build up.

Yes, Merritt agrees. Then he realizes how long it's been since either of them spoke, feels eyes on him and declares loudly, " _La singe est sur la branch_ , no, wait, _merde_ – No! – _Scappo_ … that's still wrong…"

He sinks a little in his seat. Those are Jack's eyes on him. They ought to be laughing but they're not. They sting. You can only hurt with a glance when you've been hurt pretty deep yourself. It's not the first time in his life, or even the first time in this mildly awkward week, that Merritt has learned this particular lesson, but it only ever gets harder to have it brought home – just because you know where the nerve is doesn't mean you ought to go for it.

Jack begins to argue, barely a sound, barely the first syllable of her name and Lula cuts in quick, "If you won't do it for you, what about for me?" A pause. Way too much of a pause; Merritt winces on his dear friend's behalf. "Oh, _cold_."

"I'm sorry, what do you want me to s-?"

"Do it for the bunk beds."

This pause is very different. She may as well have stabbed Jack in the stomach. Merritt knows this because he clutches his own.

The eventual answer comes with frankly _inspiring_ reserve, the tight coldness of gangsters in old movies, Jack making his potential powers known even the face of her taking it all away from him with those two simple words, _bunk beds_. "Y'know, since the second I told you about that, I've regretted telling you about it."

And she is grinning, quite too utterly pleased with herself, and pats his chest, "As well you should."

There is a minute's more conversation – Lula is taking the train down with Dylan in a couple of days, Danny will be along soon after that, having taken care of a few loose ends in Paris. Boring things, logistics, discussed with casual warmth and in-jokes and the light brushes of little touches. " _Voi raggazi,"_ Merritt mutters, " _voi mi fa star male_ …"

" _Il mouse è sotto il tavolo_ ," Antonella tells him sternly, reprimanding his leap ahead into personal states of being, which is far more advanced than animals and prepositions and they won't reach that until CD Six.

 _"_ _Scusi, Antonella, ma si sta prendendo il sua tempo…_ "

With characteristic focus and grit, " _Il mouse è sotto il tavolo."_

"Eel mosey," he relents, "is sotto eel table-oh."

Down low, so that Merritt has to tip his head back a little further, bump his headphones forward, to catch her through an unshod ear, Lula whispers, "Do you think he'll be okay by next week?"

"I guess you can't hypnotise yourself to learn a language."

Merritt jolts his headphones back on, " _Questo è quello che pensi…"_ Then, out in the realm beyond him where he's not supposed to notice, comes the goodbye kiss, and he really does try to concentrate on the monkey on the branch, the snake beneath the rock, the rat behind the bookshelf, anything except that peculiar damp silence that doesn't quite feel like two people but doesn't quite feel like one either. You feel it even in crowds sometimes, that very slight blurring at the edges of individuality, couples so intent on each other that they stop being _people_ exactly and become more the sensation of 'relationship'. Merritt has never been entirely comfortable with it, and once you understand it, once you're sensitised… Really, it depends what your feelings are on 'surrender', conditional or otherwise…

Lucky for him it's early in the morning and the preceding conversation has been a tad too spiny for things to drag on too long. Ultimately his driver for the morning is released and becomes his own presence on the blind periphery again.

And, as the driver's door opens, just to show exactly how oblivious he is, "La scimmia è su-"

"You did that one already."

"I can't help it if Annie skips sometimes."

"I _knew_ you could hear through those headphones."

 _Merda_ … Really must be early in the morning, if the kid is catching him out. Now, with no choice but to engage, to let the inevitable altercation begin, he grabs the headphones down around his neck, "Well, excuse me, but considering _I_ was the primary topic of conversation-"

"No, you weren't. Then again, what conversation ever goes by you with your _name_ and you don't think it's about _you_ -"

Still in the wing mirror, getting smaller by the second, Lula shakes her head and walks away.

"No, forgive me, the primary topic of conversation was the Turnpike Incident, on which, by the way, I _covered_ for you. Who have I ever told? Who but you and I knows I was asleep the whole damn time?!"

"I didn't know! I didn't know; Vegas was the only time I'd been out of New York, and I needed a passport for _that_ , why wouldn't I need one to drive into Pennsylvania, how was I supposed to kn-?"

"And I appreciate that, and I covered! And despite even such egregious statements of the depth of our friendship and my respect for you, _one_ little comment – _one_ – one tiny little comment, and-"

"It's not one comment." This is true. Merritt knows this. He knew it when he said it was, and he knew it when he made the comment itself, already regretting it. And since then he has justified it, told himself it had to be done, that he did it for Dylan, for Danny, for the work, that he made a vocational choice? Then he'll think of all the other lesser buttons he might have pushed and tell himself off for _dire stronzate_ … So he waits. If there's a lecture coming now, if there is some attempt on Jack's part to explain his feelings around the incident, Merritt waits to take it.

But no such explanation is forthcoming. Merritt waits, and waits some more. By the time he begins to wonder to himself if the simple statement was supposed to be enough, if he is supposed to be able to apologize based on little more than an opening grunt, it's too late. The moment has passed.

In an effort to call it back he tries, "How's your arm?"

Jack lets go of the wheel a moment to shoot his cuff, covering the fraying bandage edging out from beneath. "It's fine."

"Only Dylan said it was pretty serious. I mean, not first-degree. But we went way beyond the run-it-under-a-cold-faucet stage."

"It'll be better by next week." A flash of an unkind smile, "Can you say the same for your Italian?"

So it seems there is to be frost on the van's inside windows after all. Merritt lifts his brow, just the once. He thinks about talking, then realizes that's how he got here, and just puts his headphones back on. The whale is in the ocean – thank you, Antonella, we'd be worried if it wasn't. The goat is in the field – well, bless you for that soothing bucolic image. The bird is on the roof…

The bird is on the roof and Merritt remembers this is his absolute favourite part of the six CD set.

"Wait," he says, sudden and sharp. Grabbing off the headphones, running the volume right up so it can be heard even over the engine, "You have to hear this."

" _L'uccello è sul tetto."_

Jack sighs, "Not in the mood right now."

"It's coming, bear with me."

Antonella's normal voice, the constant soundtrack of Merritt's life these days, moves on to the dog on the porch and the fish in the river. If you're in the mood, it could actually be soothing to have all these right and natural things said aloud to you. If you're in the mood, each and every of these simple descriptive sentences is an analogue to 'all's well with the world'. The fish is in the river and God's in his heaven. We're still a viable distance from the sun and the goat is in the field. But Jack, as he stated, is _not_ in the mood. He's not listening quite so deeply, not letting the subliminal lull affect him. If he was doing this on purpose, Merritt might even be proud. That kid, when he met him, was not only an open book but didn't see anything _wrong_ with that. Naivety being quite the ugliest hang-up, to Merritt's mind, they beat that crippling honesty out of him but quick.

This isn't that, though. This is nothing so commendable as that. Jack is just being stubborn.

But you know, there's nothing better than watching somebody who wants to reject you, and all your offerings and worldly promises, suddenly straighten up, suddenly lose all ability to pretend he isn't interested –

Because this is Merritt's favourite part of Learn Italian In A Week. This is the part about _il gatto_ …

" _Il gatto,"_ and Antonella is part- _gatto_ herself, practically purring, all her frigid, fascist professionalism gone in a heartbeat, " _è sulla sedia_."

Jack is staring at the headphones hanging from Merritt's fist, checking the road with only momentary glances, as if he imagined it. "What happened to h-?" he begins, but Merritt hushes him. With a nod of his head, he motions they should listen again.

 _"_ _Il gatto è sulla sedia..."_ , the sultry growl of a dark-eyed seductress in some secluded doorway, the click of a heel blocked from view by a marble column, white teeth glinting out of a grin and disappearing into the dusky night.

Both of them, as one, echo the new-minted minx, "Il gatto è sulla sedia," and after a reverent moment Jack returns to his former question, "What happened to her?! Where did the ice bitch go?"

"Definitely the same woman!" Merritt cries. It's the first time he's been able to share his disbelief. " _Definitely_. I've listened to these recordings every day for more than a week-"

"I think you're supposed to speak Italian by now."

"-And it's definitely still my Annie."

"It's a whole other side of Annie. I wonder what it is about cats on chairs that gets her so… _excited_."

"Well, this is the question, my fr- Wait, you understood that? You speak Italian?"

Jack thinks, bounces his answer around before he gives it, "A little. New York Italian. So I can order food and insult you, like, nine different ways. Cats-on-chairs is right on the edge of what I know."

Before Jack can get too stuck on the insults and why he might want to use them, "Cats on chairs, man. My personal theory is that the sound guy smiled at her. You know how it is, you sit there for hours reading basic phrases and then somebody pays attention and… Annie overreacted."

"Maybe it's embarrassing. In Italy, maybe it means something else." Merritt furrows his brow. "Like, _something else_?" Too much double-talk, still too early in the morning, but before Merritt has to ask, Jack – in a harlot Italian which puts Antonella's momentary lapse to shame, all significant pause and inflection says again, " _Il gatto è sulla sedia_ …"

"Well, when you put it that way… I'll make you a deal; if you come with me to order, and to insult our way out of any trouble, I'll try it around a bar and see if I can't get myself slapped, how's that?"

For the first time in a week Jack laughs. It is blessed and greatly appreciated, but there's a fade in it Merritt doesn't like, a horrible faltering moment where it might sink back into sullenness, might remember where they were before Antonella's lapse from Vatican-strict Catholicism and that it was not fully resolved. It doesn't happen this time, but it might the next.

So he's going to have to do it. There isn't a choice anymore. However he might feel about it, this isn't going to be fixed until Merritt makes an apology. It won't be a full one and Jack doesn't even understand why he was picked on in the first place, but maybe that doesn't matter so much, in the end.

In order to freshen his memory on how to order drinks, Merritt is going to need CD Four. There's a concession, a readiness to accept, when Jack invites him to give up the ancient Walkman and use the player on the dash. Eighty-some percent of this allowance might be based on a desire to see if Antonella will break her utilitarian vows again, but Merritt lets it slide. He can live with twenty percent.

He does it in that in between time as he stretches across to the unfamiliar controls, looking for a volume dial. And with his voice down low as he turns the sound up, he offers casually, "Look, I don't feature you as some kind of criminal element, okay? Nothing like that. I never did. And that was strictly late-night, between-bunks chatter and I never should have mentioned it again."

That damn pause again – Jack ought to study himself, he ought to learn to do this on purpose, because when he does, you can't help yourself, your brain runs a thousand miles an hour and doesn't say anything, it's the human equivalent of stalling out an engine, and Merritt keeps trying and trying to get himself to turn over again but-

"Forget it. Tell me more about your cat-loving girlfriend."


	15. Chapter 15

Once Jack and Merritt are in place, and certain tasks have been completed, once Dylan has received confirmation of no fewer than seventeen items of business, from within his own team, the organization as a whole and a couple of unsuspecting legitimate establishments in Rome, then he… Then he really ought to book train tickets, but he holds off and triggers Danny first. And he's good about it – a good leader and a good boss – he makes sure the orders are fully understood and the means of execution are agreed. He makes sure of everything. It's an act of kindness and understanding which he can tell Danny really appreciates, even if the aforementioned foot-soldier sounds really pretty desperate to get him off the phone by the end.

Then Dylan _really_ ought to book the train tickets, and he's poised and ready to do it. Seriously. He's got the laptop, got the site open, looking at fares – and then Alma comes home and it's lunch, it's unexpected. He forgets entirely about train tickets in the brief panic that something could be wrong and, when she explains that it's nothing but a break in her schedule and the tuna salad in the fridge, he forgets anyway. It's not often that people like them are afforded the opportunity for proper goodbyes. Even if he comes back ( _when_ , he tells himself, _when_ he comes back) he might find her gone, sent away to anywhere. These moments together are important. They're what you build a life out of.

But after that, really, when she's gone back to her desk and he's alone again and there are maybe three, four hours of the real day left, then, really, it's time to book the train tickets. It's not an easy thing, when the route can't be direct but there's only so much time, when the changes have to be careful and preferably while passing through Switzerland where the attitude to international traffic is fairly friendly. No, he really needs to sit down this time, really focus, concentrate -

Seriously; he's not even relieved when, this time, his phone rings.

"What?" he bites.

"Put her to sleep." The voice is definitely Jack's, but the sentiment is so on point that Dylan actually checks if the phone call is real, that he hasn't imagined it. How else can someone call out of nowhere and answer a question you haven't even dared to ask yourself yet? "Merritt's here, he's going to talk you through how to do it so she'll stay under the whole time and wake up fine with it. Here, I'll put him o-"

"Wait." Just to be sure, just to make sure there are no crossed wires, "What are you talking about?"

"Lula text me at two a.m. Which means she hasn't been sleeping. You know what she text me about?"

"…I wouldn't like to guess."

"Whales. _Whales_ , man; about the surface area of whales and if that has anything to do with them living so long. Which means she hasn't _been_ sleeping. And she can't sleep normally on trains, planes, anything with a window, because she has to look out and see what's happening and… And _talk_ about it, so just trust me on this one, _everybody_ is going to be happier if you just put her under."

To Dylan, it all feels a little harsh. Jack's voice down the line is transparent, free of all cruelty, any trace of hardness. It generally is. Dylan doesn't for one second believe there is any meanness in it. Maybe if it hadn't been so bluntly put…

Still, he books the tickets. Hardly thinking about it, actually, and with the phone held between shoulder and ear. He listens carefully to Meritt's clear, gentle instruction, asks questions, makes mental notes, each of them appreciating the other's skill level. And as soon as he hangs up from that call Dylan calls Lula without the slightest twitch of dread and has her meet him at the station. He wonders, on the way there, which acts more powerfully in easing one's apprehensions over a particular problem – knowing what you're going to do about it, or just having somebody else acknowledge the problem is real. He never comes up with an answer. They remain equal in his mind.

He sits in the sun so that Lula, opposite him, won't be bothered by the glare. It also allows him to use his watch. Barely perceptible turns of his wrist flash the light up and down over her face, until she blinks it off, "Cut it out. What is that, what are you doing?"

"Hm? Oh, I think it's just the sun on the second-hand. Can't help that. Time goes by. Tick-tock." The flashes and his words find a rhythm, tick-tock, and given that phrase to hang on to, Lula picks the rhythm up, tick-tock. Then, with carefully chosen topics of conversation and the occasional finger-snap, Dylan keeps her attention on him and away from the windows, until, by the time the Canal St Denis slimes by underneath them, her head rolls onto her shoulder and she's gone. They won't meet again until Basel, in about four hours' time.

You'd be amazed what you can get done in four hours. Even when you're paranoid and waiting to be recognized, even when you don't like trains because they are essentially tin cans being shot along a rail and you're locked in the whole way, you can catch up an awful lot of work in four uninterrupted hours. And since Lula's got another nap to catch, the five hours from Basel to Como, and maybe another between Como and Florence, or Florence and Tivoli, who knows?, by the time this show comes around, Dylan might even be ready for it.

Does he consider adding sleep-induction to a carefully curated list of management strategies he's got regarding the members of his team? Well, of course not. This is an exception. He was _asked_ to do this, and to do it for Lula's benefit and…

And yes, fine – for dark days, for extreme circumstances, a desperate measure stored away for a desperate time, fine.

Look, just because it goes on the list doesn't mean he ever intends to use it. Consider it, if you have to consider it at all, if you can't just let it go and relax and forget the list even exists, consider it Dylan's nuclear deterrent. And please pay as little attention as you can possibly bear to how quickly he reaches for his brand new red-button when Lula vanishes from the concourse at Basel.

Gone, nowhere, like smoke. In the time it took for him to turn to a counter and order coffee, disappeared.

Now, he's not considering anything underhanded or immoral, would never use his skills (or even Merritt's) for evil. He would, however, like it to be noted, this wouldn't have happened if she'd been asleep. She'd be right where he left her, if she was asleep. He tells the barista as much, though the young lady smiles politely, maybe taking his heartfelt non-sequitur for poor French.

But before fear or anxiety can set in, while he's still thinking clearly and sensibly about how to find his rogue magician, where she might have gone, he spots her. Rushing, head dipped down, doing more to attract attention to herself than she appears to believe. She has a plastic bag under her arm that wasn't there before. Lula scuttles up to the table and into her chair, arranging herself exactly as she was when Dylan turned away, like maybe he still won't notice her brief absence.

He _would_ speak, but at just the furrowing of his brow, she breaks, "I know, I know. Don't split up, don't stray, don't go farther than you absolutely have to, travelling is the worst time to get caught and the easiest time to get caught and I know, I do. I know. But c'mon, I was gone, like, twenty seconds, and it's all fine and-" Dylan pinches the bridge of his nose. Cell phones are no good idea while they're on the move but maybe there's a payphone somewhere, he could phone down to Rome and get some tips on induced somnambulism. Walk her through the stations still asleep, God, he could do it with all of them. You could put them under, if you really wanted to, if you were so inclined, you could pack them in crates and just ship them and then you only have to worry about customs, no human factor, take all the logistics out of travelling…

He catches himself. "Just tell me where you went."

"Well, I saw it when we passed coming through from the platform and I didn't see any point in bugging you to stop and I knew we'd have time before the Como train, so-" The words go away. There's a certain level of attention you can pay where you miss the bulk of it (and believe it when Dylan tells you, when there's no script to stick to, Lula speaks in bulk). You still get the odd word, though, the ones that tell the story. Words like 'Jack' and 'shirt' and the edge of something sticking out the top of the bag. "To replace the other one. You know, the one that got written on? Thought he was never going to shut up about it, whether it was my fault or not. I mean, I _told_ him what actually happened, and I told him I could have done the same to him about that jacket of mine that got all crispy-fried on the mannequin, even though it's really you who owes me a jacket? Not to mention he's got maybe six totally identical ones. Really, don't even know why I'm bothering, honestly, because it's the real deal? And he still loves his ten-dollar Brooklyn knock-offs? But I am the _queen_ of the unappreciated gift – my grandma's last birthday? Last-last, as in the one before she died, not the one within the last year – I got her this I lost you when I mentioned that shirt with the writing on it, didn't I?"

Count to three and Dylan catches up to the switch in topic. It's her own fault; she shifts the conversation midsentence and without so much as a change in tone to signal it, there's nothing to go on. Dylan has to wait until all those words washing over him arrange themselves in their proper line before he finds the hairpin turn in that never-ending flow. And, yes, if he's honest, he might have still been stuck back at that shirt with the writing on it.

Lula sees him arrive at the same point and, toe-to-toe, strikes again, "What have you got against clowns anyway? I think clowns are kind of cool."

 _Well, they're not!_ , but he bites his tongue, forces the outburst down. It breaks out instead as a fine, cold sweat between his shoulder blades. Half hidden behind his coffee, he mutters, "Don't like 'em."

"Yeah, but _why_?"

It is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that Dylan has looked at Lula with his teeth gritted and reminded himself coolly, _You recruited her for her energy and optimism as much as her skill, you don't get to pick when she displays it, you brought this on yourself_ …

"Alright, you really want to know? They stole your breakfast and wrote on you without you noticing, and you want me to tell you why you shouldn't trust those clowns?"

Notice, if you're clever, how he changes the question, steers it away from clowns generally and makes it about the two envoys specifically. Notice how he makes it about mistrust and not fear. When an answer begins 'do you really want to know?', believe nothing that comes after. That's just something people say while they perfect their upcoming lie. But Lula is caught up, and nods earnest and with glittering eyes. Thank God she's still got so much to learn.

"Clowns watch," he tells her. "These ones, in particular, they watch and they know things. No one's completely sure how they do it but they do. They consider it their _job_ , maybe the same way we consider ours to be balance and justice, but just _knowing_. There's no morality in just knowing, see? That's why you can't trust them. They're tricky and cryptic and they lie. They manipulate outcomes."

"So what do those two know?"

He tells her, and she's the only person he's told, what they wanted. That there was no message, that he would be expected to meet with the higher-ups, that there's a sense of tradition and respect they are determined to uphold. "The offer of knowledge is supposed to be a gift, it should be enough. You're not expected to refuse."

He knows what her next question will be, even as she flounders to form it. To Lula, there's no question, no decision to be made – if the clowns know something that might affect them, they should be spoken to. Dylan should have agreed to the meeting with his next breath. And maybe that's easy for her to say, but that's because it's true.

Before she can cut him to ribbons, "It doesn't matter. We know what the message must have been, what's coming to us – it's Dasko. Which we can deal with. So what did we lose? Aside from Jack's shirt, I mean."

"The point is, _you don't know_."

There's no tick-tock, no flashes of his watch, required to keep Lula quiet through the mountains into Italy.


	16. Chapter 16

Finger exercises. The coin rolling back and forth across Danny's knuckles and being bounced up to balance on the back of his middle finger and tossed with two other coins and all caught in order as they fall, it's just finger exercises. That's all. Nothing like nerves, and nothing like the nerves that come out of burying quiet, slow-burning anger over a prolonged time period, and nothing either like the nerves that come when you swallow down great swathes of panic at least twice a day. Finger exercises and nothing more; where would anger like that even come from? And panic? Well, alright, maybe there's an argument for panic. Panic might, for instance, come from being left alone in a major European city with minimal instruction, a lot to accomplish and a fairly vague escape plan. It could come from feeling like you were alone long before that, like there are cracks all through the things you thought were solid and there is nothing you can do about it. You might have to swallow down on panic when, upon being told that Jack and Merritt are talking again, you feel _nothing_ , no improvement, you might feel panic when you find out that the cracks go that deep. If there are problems everywhere and no one will talk to you about them – no overt expression of mistrust, but plenty of implicit ones – then yes, maybe, you could make an argument for panic.

You could make an argument for the sublimated rage, too, since Danny knows precisely what root all this filth has been growing from.

You _could_ , except that that would be petty. Because if you know where the root lies, what you ought to do instead of getting angry is go and tear it out of the earth and dispose of it somewhere cold and dead where it will never be able to take hold again. Admittedly that's more of a fantasy than an actual option, but Danny likes to think about it. Finger exercises, see? Finger exercises have, _always_ have, brought him to a place of zen, centred, able to feel the coin move without looking, without even thinking. It's really the only time Danny's mind can drift, the only time his pained awareness of concrete reality drops enough to let him imagine pulling up weeds.

But it stops. It always stops. Conscious thought always creeps back in. Unbidden and irresistible, he can never defend against it. The second he feels it start he knows the peace is over. It's also how he knows he's done. Danny doesn't decide to drop the coin between two fingers, onto the pad of his thumb, to slide it into the hidden pocket between the cloth and the facing of his cuff, he just does it. He doesn't decide to stand and start for the door. It happens. He's ready for it now, so it happens.

First – for the last two months he's been cultivating a friendly relationship with a Senegalese student who moved in two floors down. Not exactly close, just close enough that tonight he can knock the door and ask to use the computer for just a second. He says his WiFi is down. It's not really a lie, considering everything that might lead from the apartment back to him has been shut off already. Even his equipment and luggage, everything but the clothes he's wearing and the bag on his back, went in the van with Jack and Merritt. In a couple of hours, there'll probably be no coming back to this building.

And what does it? What key does he turn at the neighbour's computer and lock himself out for good? One tweet. Well under the hundred-and-forty characters. A street address.

Second – Danny makes his way to the Fifth Arrondissement and, with a long steel key and a lot more effort than he was really expecting, removes the cover from a manhole.

Third – he goes for coffee. He buys a muffin too, but only slips that into his pocket. Give word time to spread, which won't take long. The chosen spot, in the Latin Quarter, is fairly central, and the area full of students and successful professionals, integrated digital lives. Coffee should be just enough time to let people gather. It doesn't need to be a big crowd, so long as there are cameras and online profiles and the Horsemen's dual fanbase of magic lovers and law enforcement professionals still persists.

It would be _nice_ if it were a big crowd, but not essential.

The stall also gives Rebecca time to find him. That _is_ essential.

Ask anybody else and they'll probably say it's a bad idea. They'll say Rebecca shouldn't be allowed to catch up, shouldn't be given the opportunity to intervene, something like that. They can say whatever they like, though; Danny knows what he wants to get out of this night. He knows what he wants to, has to, _is going to_ achieve. Dylan left him behind in Paris with two objectives – gain the kind of attention they need, shake off the kind they most definitely don't.

Danny walks through his own gathering audience, with his hood up and his chin tucked down. Stupid, maybe, tempting fate, yes. But you'd be surprised how easily you can move, how little attention people pay to your face or shape, when you carry steaming coffee without a lid among them. All they want is to get out of your way.

And it really isn't very long at all before a soft hand weasels between his arm and his side, linking to him at the elbow. As Rebecca tucks her head in against his shoulder he flinches, but she clutches him suddenly close, mumbling, "Hey, I'm doing this for you. This is cover. Now keep walking." She's not dumb enough to believe he'll lead her anywhere, intentionally or otherwise. But she's hopeful, and it makes them slow and meandering.

The hanging hand presses into his pocket and claims the muffin. Danny pretends surprise, "Hey!"

"Sorry." Rebecca's mouth is already full. Patches of her lipstick have been displaced for chocolate. "Starving. I was about to order something when I got your message." He hates her there, the warmth of her through his jacket, her elbow pressing in beneath his ribs. The top of her head is at the corner of his eye, dark flecks just beginning to grow out beneath the blonde. Hates her and says nothing. Even if he wanted to, she doesn't give him the opportunity. "Word of advice?" she says. From scanning the crowd, she turns her face up to smile at him, "From _moi à toi, mon grand amour_? On the day when narcissism finally comes to kill you? Just let it. Lay back and accept the gentle caress of death, Daniel. Don't fight it."

A pause, the first chance he might have had to get a word in, but he wastes it waiting, and then with questioning. "Sorry, normally that's the part where you'd go on and give me some reason why I shouldn't fight, some way in which my life would be made immeasurably worse by my surv-"

"I just feel like your arrogance deserves the opportunity to finally kill you. You've been teasing it long enough. That's not something nice boys do. It's time you put out."

"Oh. Charming. So inappropriate metaphors, is that all you came for?"

A giggle, still grinning, still playing the fawning girlfriend, but when she punches his arm it hurts, "Silly magic man!" and she says it loud to make him flinch again, "I came for the _show_ , obviously. Or, should I say, the _preshow_. Because I know there's a big one coming. Having a little trouble finding out the details, but I know it's on the cards. Guessing this is just the preview for that? How am I, am I getting warm? Come on, nod or shake. Blink it in Morse. Give me _something_."

A second longer, he holds down the inevitable snap, bites his tongue. They're moving out of the crowd now, moving around the corner where the street is emptier and darker. Since the opportunity to reveal him early is her only leverage, Rebecca takes action. From his side she scrabbles around in front of him, mock-playful. One hand on his chest tries to push him back where he could be recognized, shoves him so hard he drops his coffee, and she's louder than before, " _Please_ , Daniel!"

This time he grabs her by the shoulders, hard enough to shake her. Rebecca changes, snaps to attention and is snake-like when she softens. Her eyes stay fixed on his but there's a sway in her body. Tiny nods, teeth gritted or nipping a lip or the tip of her tongue, she knows better than to beg but she wants to. Danny makes a show of checking over his shoulder. "You really want to know? Bear in mind, there is absolutely nothing you can do with the information. There are five of us and none of us has any interest in this needy bullshit routine of yours. Realize that you are _nothing_ , that you don't even make a ripple, you don't even move _dust_ in our plans, and tell me you want to know."

"I want to know," and she glitters all over, "I want to know everything. Rome, I got that far all by myself, but tell me _everything_ about Rome, Danny. Hey, is Henley coming to Rome?" He takes a step and she backs away to stay ahead of him. With a nod he directs her, indicating a street narrower still and still further from the massing audience. She's practically skipping, buzzing, "Oh my God, I'm actually getting somewhere!"

Through all of this he keeps her walking, step by step in high-heeled boots, and Rebecca doesn't so much as throw a glance behind. Maybe she's trusting him to guide her safely. But her eyes haven't left his. That psychotic, burning focus is the only thing about that which seems genuine. Danny makes sure to hold that gaze, and to keep talking.

"Of course you are. Why wouldn't you be getting somewhere? We know you know it's Rome. We know you know more than that too and you're lying to me. But, see, it doesn't matter. Rebecca, I can tell you the date and time, I can tell you the tricks and the rigs and the equipment, I can tell you the work already done in Rome and the work yet to be done, can tell you the reasons and justifications."

One more backward step will place her directly over – and down through – the sewer grate he opened. Not a lethal move and not even an especially smart one but, in combination with the message he's been delivering, certainly it makes a statement. And if he puts the manhole back, it's unlikely she'll be able to follow him tonight. Who knows? Depending how she falls, Rebecca might even break a leg. Hope springs.

Danny leans forward, just a touch. "All you had to do was ask. And if you weren't so busy _pretending_ you're an idiot – which, by the way, I do not get, it's getting you nowhere – you'd understand why I'm able to do that." More of a lean, about to take the step.

"Because I really am an- Oh, hang on, just a second." Rebecca puts up her hands, pushing at his chest to steady herself. She continues backward, one long step over the yawning dark. From the safety of the other side, "That's better. Where was I? I was being an idiot, wasn't I? I'm an idiot so it doesn't matter what I know?"

The merest flicker turns her crazed grin into something lopsided and cruel. She looks down into the hole. "It's just silly enough that it maybe would have worked, except that it's a huge hole. And it stinks. And I don't really do the trapdoor thing anymore. And to keep me walking and not noticing, _you_ would need to be intimidating and… There's just nothing threatening about you, Danny, I'm sorry." He opens his mouth to speak, and for once finds himself with nothing to say. Rebecca's smile returns and she raises her waving hands, "No, no, you're right. I'm an idiot. Pay no attention to me. I'm an idiot. Hey, did Wilder get anywhere with my phone? I can't see how, without the passcode. But what do I know? I'm an idiot. It's you, by the way; you're my passcode. You can tell him I said so."

Honestly, though, Danny misses this. A few hours from now, when he's travelling and there's time and nothing else, he'll relive this – more than once. He won't really hear her until then. For the moment he is stranded, and the gap she so nimbly stepped over is swollen huge, trying to suck him in. He can't hear a word over the howling of it.

Sometimes you drop the coin. When the finger exercises are more than just that, when you really need them. When you ask too much of the simple things, sometimes they quit on you. You drop the coin, and it leaves you stranded. It leaves you on an island, spent and alone. Leaves you looking at the black hole in front of you and considering stepping into it yourself, just to escape this moment. Danny wants it to take him out of the world where this was ever his plan and he ever thought it was good. He had, in fact, already imagined himself telling the story. He knew who would laugh and who would wryly smile and what the questions would be. But that was back when he thought it was going to work. An open trapdoor; it was such a simple plan. He asked too much of it. Dropped the coin.

Rebecca's smile is merciless as she retreats. She doesn't turn around either. She's got a point to prove, not so much as looking behind her. "You know what?" she tells him, "I think I'll skip the trailer. We'll see each other in the Eternal City, hm? Ciao for now."

Danny stands a while longer where she leaves him, and long after she has left him behind. Conscious thought has been jammed by defeat, sprung a cog loose and ceased to run. But it creeps back. It always does. It creeps back in the form of the noise of the growing crowd and in remembering, they are expecting a performance.


	17. Chapter 17

It's around this point in the proceedings that each of the Horsemen is starting to feel the strain. This is far from the biggest show they've attempted, and the non-performing element is minimal – which is to say, there are no banks to rob or armed thugs to evade – but the workload is never light. Maybe twenty-four hours from now they will become convinced none of it will come together in time, that they've missed something, this was too easy, that wasn't done well enough, they'll cower from the spectre of prison or, worse, a less than polished performance. But that desperation has yet to kick in. It really can't, since nobody has had a moment to think about it.

Take Jack, for example. From a long afternoon interfering with a pre-existing tannoy system, frustrated and scratched all over from wire ends and a little deaf in his left ear after a screech of feedback, he returns to their temporary home three storeys above a pale, fountained piazza. Through the back door, of course, with barely a nod of acknowledgement from the friendlies in the downstairs trattoria, up past their storage in the service elevator. The tension, the energy, the sneaking around, that can't be dropped until he's inside and the door securely locked behind him.

But once that's gone, nothing stands in the way of crushing, leaden exhaustion. He stands a second with his eyes shut, where he can still feel the door at his back, no more than a few inches to sink. He doesn't lean back, though, afraid of falling asleep where he stands. When was the last time he slept for more than a couple of hours?

Then something cuts through, wriggles a tendril through the fog and tickles the part of his brain that still knows strange when he sees it. The room in front of him, what he saw before he closed his eyes, is trapped like a photograph behind his lids. But there are parts of it that don't seem to be right. The cavernous main room looks how he remembers. All its shapes and colours are in the right places. But in the image Jack has, Merritt is sitting at the window with a mirror scratching ferociously at his chin, and Lula is stalking back and forth across the floor in sweat pants and three inch heels flapping her arms.

Tuning into the world again, he hears the scratching and material flapping, and opens his eyes to match the two up.

No, he was right. He didn't imagine it. Isn't hallucinating from lack of sleep.

There are sensible explanations. Lula is practicing her quick-change, and flapping because she feels the front of her blouse really should be opening down into the skirt of a gown by now. Jack times his way across the room so he passes behind her back, reaches up to flip open the hook she has forgotten at the back of her collar. He hears without seeing the swish of incredibly thin silk sweeping away from her, and her tiny little, "Ah."

"Jet lag," he gives her for an excuse. "Or train lag, whatever."

Pleading just a touch, "Danny gets that one for me?"

"Nope. You get that one when you straighten the blouse collar. Small of the back, next change, Danny gets that one." A strangled cry, and the steps that take off are not so sharp and elegant as they were when the hallway floor was her catwalk. Lula clatters away to one of the side-rooms to pin up her gown again.

Through all of this Jack never breaks stride, and has by now come to the window. Staying Merritt's hand, scratching so fast it blurs, "Why haven't you been wearing that collar we got you? I told you you'd get fleas."

"I haven't had fleas since we traded bunks."

Jack raises both hands, "I was _going_ to offer to help, but-" As he starts to pull away, Merritt relents. He gives up his itchy fidgeting long enough to stick out his chin.

Unless you know what you're looking at, the mess might seem like a medical emergency. What looks like a thick and gelatinous layer of dissolving skin has been picked and scraped away around every stubble hair. "Are you serious? Why would you even _attempt_ spirit gum without shaving?"

There's alcohol solvent with the equipment. Merritt moans like a child about how it will sting and, like a child, is ignored. Jack does it all with grim determination and his mind on the reward, so close now, of a long, undisturbed nap. He pauses only to express mild approval when, while digging through a case for the dreaded bottle, he finds Lula studying her reflection. She's in her last change now, the one she'll wear into the fire trap. It's only the thought of fire that allows Jack to straighten up and leave her behind again.

But Lula must think of it too; she scuttles after him and keeps step, tugging at his sleeve. The stretch catches the dressing beneath catches the burn beneath that and he winces. "Let me see that bandage."

"It's fine."

"You can let me see it, or we can have an argument first and then you'll let me see it."

So there's Jack, with soaked cotton in one hand daubing at Merritt's face, "What were you gluing on anyway?"

Hanging from him, there's Lula, "You have to keep putting the gel on this. Don't like the look of this yellow at the end…"

And Merritt, who out of his squint of pain manages somehow to glance down at Lula's dress, and breaks off from his little chorus of ouches to tell her, "Left hip's buttoned upside down. The tearaway still works but it'll be cleaner."

She slams the burn gel into Jack's palm, drawing another wince, before she disappears again to investigate. When the purpose of the entire outfit is to disappear, even minor alterations are best undertaken beyond a secured door.

Once the gum is cleared from Merritt's chin, Jack throws the wadded cotton at him and sits down on the couch to take care of his own wound. Here's another medicine that stings while it heals. To distract himself, he tries again, "So what were you wearing facial hair for anyway?"

This time Merritt almost gets as far as answering. Then, somewhere above them, hidden on the mezzanine level, there's a crash so huge and sudden that Jack ducks, arms over his head. Dylan's roar of rage follows hard upon it. Merritt, laying back against the arm of the couch, takes off his hat and places it over his face. Mumbling from beneath it, he answers the newer and more urgent question. "Attila the Hun up there has been trying to call someone, won't tell me who, in the States for most of the afternoon. Maybe about Dasko's cell phone, but that's just me guessing. Won't tell me that either."

It seems, however, this latest defeat has broken him; Attila is retreating. Dylan charges down about half the stairs before he catches them watching and composes himself. With all the reserve he can find, and the smile of an adult trying not to scare the children, he claps his hands together, "Anybody else need a drink? Right now?"

Jack and Merritt each put a hand in the air. After a second of expectant silence, Lula calls from the other room, " _Oh, don't forget Lula, we should totally remember Lula, because we care about her and we don't forget her just because we can't see her, we should absolutely take care of Lula too._ "

"I got it," Dylan yells back. Once she has subsided, he points from Jack to the television, "And find out what channel's got the late news in Italy; I want to see Atlas."

When Jack leans forward to pick up the remote, his other hand stretches out and picks up Merritt's hat. He leaves it upended on the table, and flips cards into it from a deck in his free hand while he channel-surfs. "What's the Italian word for news?"

"Buy a dictionary. Stealing a man's hat when he's too spent to get up and take it back… Unseemly..."

So cruelly deprived of his blindfold, Merritt is forced to take stock of his surroundings. Like the couch; until now he has never taken the time to fully appreciate the striped raw silk upholstery of a couch that probably goes back a couple of generations. It's a nice couch, comfortable. These few days since he and Jack first arrived, he has favoured it. But there's been so much on his mind, there's been no time to grasp the quality. With thought and a dim sense of guilt, he kicks off his shoes.

His eyes slide sideways; the coffee table is real marble, off-white run through with red. He tries watching his hat fill, but Jack is too accurate to be amusing. There's no tension, no danger. Five perfect cards and Merritt is bored.

But maybe you have to be bored to notice things like real marble – not just the table but the palatial, gleaming floor too – and the curlicues at the baroque windows being real carved and gilded wood, not plaster cast.

Maybe you have to be bored to think back on the view from the balcony, impressive enough to short-circuit thought of any depth. In his mind's eye he looks out over those iconic domes and angles again, sees sunset glow fire off the surface of the Tiber and calls out idly, "Dylan?"

"Yeah?" Dylan follows his answer into the room, carrying two open beers in either hand. They rattle, threaten to splash. Merritt finds his hands spreading defensively over the couch's silk.

"How'd you find this place?"

Confused hesitation; if Merritt was sitting up and could get a decent look at it, he'd know if it was genuine or not. "…Put the address in my phone. How'd you find it?"

"What do you reckon, Wilder – does that mean he's not telling us, or it came down from above and he knows no more than we do?"

Jack has one careful card balanced on the opening of his beer. A sharp upward flick turns it spinning into the air, and with barely a breath he catches it at an end and sends it shooting down on top of the pile in the hat. Hands up, laughing with delight at himself, "Holy shit, did you see th…?!" But there are two pairs of eyes on him when he turns, and they are not wide with shock and awe and they are not impressed. "What? Sorry. What am I sorry for? Were we talking about something? You both look like we were talking about something. What I was working on today, I got this huge blast of static right in my ear, and-"

Merritt shakes his head, falls back hard on the arm of the couch. Dylan mutters, "Forget it. What time is it?"

Jack checks his watch, eyes flaring, " _Time_ , man," and picks up the remote again. Local news is just about to turn to international.

When Jack sits back he takes the hat with him. An idle hand begins to gather the deck. He doesn't need to look; he knows them by their texture, gathers them all the same way up and the block they make is clean-edged. Dylan catches himself watching, snaps out of it to ask where Lula is. "She ought to see this too."

Merritt points back through the door to another room. "Rehemming her third layer."

"Again?" Dylan lifts his voice, "Lula, you make that any shorter, I'm not letting you out of the palazzo."

Beyond the doorway, fabric tears. "Too late, Dad."

"We'll discuss it later. Come see your brother on TV."

There have been videos online for an hour or more, but low angle and low quality. They've all glanced at them, all wished they'd waited. All sit now understanding more or less of what the Italian anchor says, praying there were better cameras there. There was time for them to arrive, if Danny's tease was right, if it was taken seriously. Waiting to find out is tense enough to make their silence crackle.

Then comes the third news item and even Lula, whose Italian vocabulary begins and ends with _marinara_ , can make a pretty good guess at what _Quattro Cavalieres_ might mean.

What's said, what the tone is, the implications, none of that matters. The recording is what matters. Triumph swells up out of those gathered to watch when they see that it is clear, free of streetlight glare, and shot from the building across the street. Those extra couple of floors make all the difference. They have allowed the news camera to capture perfectly the moment in which J Daniel Atlas walked clear through a locked, fretted window and six feet out on thin air just like it was sidewalk underneath him.

It's actually slightly less than six feet, it's five-nine. You need that extra portion to fix the harness rig to the inside of the window frame. If the frame hadn't been empty – the window itself wasn't real, but a projection onto fine film – it would have needed even more of Danny's miraculous walking distance. They have actually gotten pretty lucky on the filming angle too; the three fine bars supporting Danny's weight are always obscured by his body. The people on the ground lost them, blinded by the streetlights, but an aerial shot would have really killed the trick.

But only Dylan, since he was the one who rigged it, is thinking about the rig.

Merritt reaches up to respectfully remove his hat, before he remembers he's not wearing it. Lula keens, leaning in against Jack. And Jack only stares. In either hand he holds half of the deck, and each hand cuts and turns it, slow mirror shuffling. To an outsider it might look complicated but to Jack it's nothing. It's what his hands do for that moment when his brain shuts down, faced with the sight of this person he knows walking on _nothing_ , and like it was the easiest thing in the world, and that could be Jack too.

Then it ends. There's more news in the world, but nothing anyone here cares about.

"I want to talk to him," Lula buzzes, clutching a cell-phone she knows she can't use. "I want to talk to him now, I want to tell him we saw it and it was beautiful."

Merritt's hand claps down on Dylan's shoulder, "Couldn't have worked better." To begin with, it's true. More than that, though, it's a kindness. Dylan just takes a second to himself; it's nice, gratifying, to be remembered. He basks as long as he dares. And when he emerges from the warmth, Jack is consoling Lula, "Wherever Danny is, he knows it was good. He's congratulating himself enough for all of us. And he'll be here tomorrow." Looking back to Dylan, "Right?"

"Tomorrow night. And not to throw cold water over you all, but he might be bringing trouble along with him. So here's what we're going to do – from here on out, you don't discuss the show. Not the set-up, not the performance, not a word. Each of us does our own part, but the left hand doesn't know what the right is up to."

"I don't get it," and by the tight shake of his head, the touch of fear behind his eyes, it's clear that Jack doesn't want to either. Left and right, both his hands stop moving. "What good does that do?"

"It makes life infinitely more difficult for anybody trying to put it together. Rebecca Dasko can't be in five places at once. We can."


	18. Chapter 18

"I no longer own a single pair of work shoes which are entirely free of pigeon crap."

"Well, now I know what to bring you back for a present."

"Present-shopping? Is that what was so important? Because I know you know you shouldn't be calling me."

Hundreds of miles away and unseen, Dylan nods to himself. Alma's right, absolutely, undoubtedly, one-hundred-percent correct, she always is. He should not be calling. As a matter of fact, it was Dylan who first and last brought that up. He reiterated it that last day in Paris, slipping it in under another promise that he'd be back and before either of them knew it. Since they first decided to try and hold on to each other somehow, he must have said it a hundred times.

But there's a rosy dawn turning pale Rome pink. He got up right along with it and found himself out on the stone balcony. Their next venue is right across the street, cut out in high relief as the shadows stretch across it low. He can look down right over the future stage, and he knows that the mechanical platform is already in place. It's been covered in black-and-yellow hazard tape. He knows they're halfway to having sound and when lighting is to be rigged and has mapped out the argument he might need to have to get Jack to shimmy up that crane hanging over the area and… And it was just hard, this time. More so than any other time he's left her behind, this has been hard.

There are pigeons on the stone balustrade, and now they suddenly chatter, as if to remind him Alma asked a question and he has only stood in silence. "I need to know, because it's the first thing Atlas is going to ask me, how are the ladies?"

"I had to move Bibi in with Mabel; Fluffy bit her." The grand-dame protecting herself from the young pretender; Fluffy will be slimming and self-administering botox by the time they get back. "But aside from that little drama, very peaceful."

"And my boys? When they're not judging your footwear, that is."

"Not so noisy. I think they miss you too." Damn her accent. It's times like this that it loses all its mystery and charm. In that accent, he can't tell if she's making fun of him for missing the doves, or if she's the one sympathising with the birds. Before he can figure it out, before he can ask so it won't torment him all day, she catches herself. Clearing her throat, back to business, "I can't get anywhere with the cellphone. It's stuck in a backlog, I can't keep pushing."

"What about a Puzo?"

"A what?"

"I'll send details, the safe way. You have so much to learn about double-duty law enforcement."

"I take that as a compliment," she says, with just enough bite to remind him how much he's asking of her already. Then, before guilt can cut too deep, "Oh, and you should know – no activity picked up for Danny yet. They are operating on the assumption that he is still in Paris."

" _Niente male quel ragazzo_ …"

* * *

If Danny knew all he was getting was a 'not bad', he would not be best pleased. His undetected escape from Paris has involved too much work to be considered 'not bad'.

By train and ageing Volkswagen he just about made it to the coast in time. From there it's been easier.

Well, no, not _easier_ exactly. 'Easy' can be analogous with 'straightforward' or 'stress-free' and, frankly, this journey is neither of those things. But with the world looking for him in Paris, Cannes was somewhat less dangerous.

Cannes to Corsica by ferry, leaving the car behind, coach across Corsica, so much traveling, so much sitting around, the effort and paranoia of going unnoticed, the first time Danny even sees his own latest trick is on the second boat, towards Livorno. He _had_ been keeping an eye on a nearby suit, despite the fact that, based on the accompanying haircut and shoes, the man is obviously far too self-involved to be law enforcement of any kind. But that stops, along with everything else up to and including seasickness, when the screen of rolling news over the seating area fills with night-time dark, streetlight glare, a hundred phone torches turned up. He remembers all those lights. He remembers the positions of the stars above him. Though almost all of his focus was on placing his feet like there was something to walk on, keeping his body in position to block the rig above him, and not looking down, there was a part of him given over to committing it all to memory. It's been a while, after all, since Danny's been the whole show.

Now that he finally gets to see it, it looks how it felt. It looks really, really good.

But just like last night was ruined before it began, the repeat is spoiled for him too. Not by Rebecca this time, but by the crawler at the bottom of the image. The words that stop him aren't even a headline. They are a little spot of advertising for a talk show on the same channel late tonight. Danny reads it the first time, then waits for it to come around in case his minimal Italian is making a fool of him.

By then, he's dispelled any doubts about immediately grabbing for his phone. "What's the matter?" Dylan snaps in answer. "Is there a problem?"

"Not with me, but you need to keep Merritt away from the television."

* * *

Across the piazza from the Horsemen's venerable hideout is a church. Of typically Italian grandeur, it can gather quite a crowd on certain feast days. That's why it has the tannoy system, wired in all over the square. It's pretty high-spec, which is why Jack has been working so hard at hijacking it for the show. More than once, though usually with a cable in each hand and one between his teeth and trying to read from scrawled notes and a netbook and, to make it short, having other things on his mind, he's been flung back to his childhood. The early mornings, the freezing cold pews, the droning. The droning in between the squeaks and squeals of the rummage-sale-funded PA speakers. Just thinking of them, he winces. Nails on a chalkboard and the terror of static bursts when you fall asleep on the couch and roll over on the remote.

From his spot, crouched among the electronics on a balcony over the front doors, Jack can't be seen. Too high up for the congregation to spot, too far away for the priest. He can see out the tall arched windows into the piazza too, and the white pillars outside protect him. Just starting to waken; street vendors pushing carts into place, fountains that had been turned down to a trickle overnight starting to shoot high again. A wave of bleary and angry locals sweeps through first, followed by the too-organized tourists trying to get an entire city, a civilization, into a day. Finally, when Jack is all but done, come the people who get up at a sensible hour and begin their day at a time when a day ought to begin, and not at five a.m. because Merritt was rehearsing his Italian in the bathroom next door.

He was doing something else in there too. After three attempts to get him to unlock the door, Jack decided he was probably happier not knowing. There was _something_ going on. Something with scrubbing. Jack definitely heard scrubbing of some kind.

Definitely happier not knowing.

At the end of his instructions, Jack checks his work twice for mistakes, and then one more time to be sure. They can't test what he's done until late tonight when the piazza empties again. The odd drifting drunk or sneaking couple won't matter, but it can't be done with the crowd piling up below. If there's a mistake, there's tomorrow to fix it, but then there's only one more test, one more try. So he checks. Jack makes very sure, if there's a fault, it isn't his. Not that that will stop him getting the blame for it, but he'll know in his heart, he did all he could.

That's what they teach you in buildings like this; to have the truth in your heart, whatever people say.

During those last five minutes, the doors beneath him are opened. With horror, he realizes the time and works faster, harder, and is leaning in to check just one last connection is tight when…

The bell. The bell and it's all over. Priests are tricksy, see, priests have side-doors they sneak in at so you can't see them coming. But the bell is unequivocal. Jack hisses, "Damn." Then he hisses harder because he _feels_ , physically, he would _swear_ to it, his mother's elbow in his ribs, hears her voice at his ear telling him to watch his mouth. Across an ocean, half the world, Jack would swear she leaves a bruise.

So he sits down, careful not to move a single wire. With his phone down by his side, hidden like it would be back at St Francis', he sends a message back to the palazzo, _Be a little late_. And as mass starts, the language doesn't really matter. Through sheer muscle memory, Jack crosses himself just when he ought to, and with just exactly as much fervour as when he was ten years old.

* * *

Lula hasn't been watching the clock either. Honestly, the damn clock doesn't deserve it. The clock was supposed to wake her this morning and did not. Now, that _may_ be due to the fact that Lula reset it to reflect the time difference between Paris and Rome – a time difference which, it transpires, does not exist – and forgot to set it back again, but doesn't that sound a lot like an excuse? Doesn't that sound like something a clock _would_ say? Now, Lula isn't one to hold a grudge, nor to passive-aggressively blame inanimate objects. No, she only lets it fester because it is the only reason she's sneaking out of the apartment, with her shoes hanging from one hand so they won't make noise on the marble. _She_ knows she's late and that's enough. No one else needs to be in on it.

So really, it's not Lula's fault, if she sees something she isn't supposed to.

Dylan paces the floor barefoot. His phone is to his ear but even at a distance Lula can hear the hold music. Plink-plonk calliope piping, she wonders how long he's been holding, since he's starting to look like parts of his mind are disintegrating. The clammy sweat, his free hand clutching, is this the same call he was trying to make yesterday? Merritt thought it was Rebecca's phone that was flung at the mezzanine floor, but maybe it was Dylan's own.

The music breaks for a moment, a little nasal gutter. " _Yes_ ," Dylan answers, through gritted teeth, "I need to speak to- No! Don't put me on hold again. I know it's you, it's always been you, they're all you, all the silly accents, you're not passing me to anyone, I only ever speak to _y_ -" but the calliope talks over him again. "Goddamn it!"

Lula could stay sneaky. Unseen as yet, she could draw back a step or two, slip on her shoes and come clomping out so as to prove she never crept anywhere to begin with. But there is nothing that so piques the curiosity as watching someone be even more slippery than you thought you were yourself. Now she's interested. She stays sneaky only long enough to place herself by his side, so that the next time Dylan turns to pace the other way, she's all he sees. He flinches hard, curses under his breath.

In her most non-threatening singsong, "Whatcha doing?" And when he doesn't answer, "Only, it sounded like an interesting sort of call, if you're calling somewhere they're deliberately making you hold forever, and-"

"Forget the phone, don't you have somewhere to be?"

"I do, but we both know where that is. No mystery there. This has mystery. Mystery intrigues me."

"Stay intrigued," he smirks. "Now get to work, Lula."

She glares while she tugs on her shoes. They are navy blue and very sensible and she hates them from a place deep down in her soul. "Is this your left-hand-right-hand thing again? Because I had to suffer a very long day following Rebecca around to get that phone so I feel like I have certain rights when it comes to its whereabo- What?!"

Since the initial shock of finding her there faded and he killed off the argument, Dylan has been studying her intently. Something about her perplexes him. Following his gaze, it seems to be the neat single button at the neat waist of the neat jacket of her neat grey suit. His hands shape the words before he can tell her what they are. "You look…"

"Awful. Hideous. Dull."

" _Professional_."

"That's what I said. Now get out of the doorway. The sooner I go, the sooner I can get back and change before anyone sees me." She's halfway down the stairs before she pauses, mid-step, and mutters to herself, "Conversational misdirection."

* * *

Merritt is the last to leave the palazzo. He's got nothing to do until six. And alright, so he has to start preparing himself around about two, and mentally he's been building up to this for weeks, but it does leave the morning hanging a little empty.

First he eavesdropped on Lula waking late and swearing to herself. She gets creative at that, when she thinks nobody's listening. It's not often Merritt comes across combination insults he's never heard before but he's picked up some real gems lately. 'Sour lemon scumdrop' is the one that comes to mind. But then she left and since then, Merritt has drifted, lost, unable for once to amuse himself.

Too much empty time means too much time to think. And every time he thinks he thinks about the job he has to do later on. And every time he thinks about _that_ , he begins talking himself out of it.

Blessed distraction is granted when Dylan calls him over to the window. One finger, just pointing down into the street, gives him everything he needs. Not a word passes between them. Merritt tips his hat and rolls out of there right and cheery.

As seems to be her trademark these days, Rebecca has placed herself outside a café. Where the crowd permits, she watches him coming. When her hands aren't busy feeding a mountain of cannoli between her painted lips, she waves. Merritt wants it noted, when he sits down across from her, she never offers him one. It doesn't even appear to cross her mind. The constant rhythm of her consumption doesn't stop either. She has already ordered crostata. When it arrives, she begins on that right alongside her first dish.

"Hello, Becky."

"I wondered when you'd get sent," she beams. "I'm glad; it's been too, _too_ long. And I'm working toward a full set – my Daniel, Miss May, now you, and I don't think the rest will be too difficult. _Maybe_ Reeves."

"If you last that long."

"Now there's a challenge. So?" The briefest pause in her eating; elbows on the table, propping up her chin, she fixes him with a bug-eyed stare, "I'll bet you lunch you can't get _anything_ out of me."

Merritt shakes his head. Since it was never offered, he takes it upon himself to reach out and snag the last cannolo from her plate. "I never liked getting in your head. The echoes make me dizzy."

First she doesn't get it. Then she laughs too long and too loud. And in the end she drops away and forgets even to ask what he wants, if not to pump her for information. Through a mouthful of cherry tart she moves right on, pointing at him with the fork, "You look different today. I can't put my finger on it, but it's… Wait, is that a tan-in-a-can? My God, McKinney, _why_? I mean, this is Italy, the sun shines here, you can just sit out for an hour and you wouldn't look so… liver-damaged."

This is a bluff. All of it. Whatever Rebecca might know, whatever her intentions might be deep down, she's got nothing in her but the bluff. This is Merritt's professional assessment. It's why he came over here, why he lets her keep giggling and stuffing her face and why he plays nice. He's been deciding, and has now decided, that Rebecca is a minimal threat. She is _disconcerting_ , certainly. That was a word Danny used to describe speaking to her that first night in the bar. _Disconcerting_ , how she talks and talks and says nothing, how she never mentioned magic or a show, nothing of any consequence or relevance. But that's all she's got. A fixed smile and endless patter, yes, but the capacity to do them any real harm? No. Merritt wouldn't credit her with that.

This is an assistant thing; they never have anything up their sleeve. The costumes they favour, they're not used to having sleeves in the first place.

He licks the last speck of vanilla filling off his fingers and is about to get up and leave her there. Just in the final moments he changes his mind and leans in instead. "I hesitate to say this, knowing how predictable it is. But say it I will. I feel like I have to… Daniel Atlas is a middling-to-poor excuse for a human being, this is true. He's got a heart the size of a quarter and just as cool. But he's a great magician and, in his own way, not a horrible friend. And… And the rest really is predictable, so I'll leave it unspoken but Becky? Consider very seriously leaving town."


	19. Chapter 19

The overnight sleeper from Paris to Rome doesn't generally stop at provincial stations so insignificant they are really no more than a plywood stage next to a field. In fact, it doesn't do that this morning either. It slows right down, but it never really stops. A heavy-set guard stands holding the rail by the door and, one meaty hand in the small of his back, shoves Petey out onto the platform. He's still staggering when Quinn hops down too. Shouting back over its shoulder, " _Scusa tanto!_ _Qualsiasi cosa lui abbia detto, mi scuso!_ _Ah, ma dai!"_ , but despite these protests the train continues on. A few feet further along their bags come sailing out.

Petey starts towards his, only to have Quinn spin and shove him. "You asshole!" The frantic, apologetic signing starts up, but Quinn won't listen, won't even look, rails on in its fury, "I wouldn't mind if you'd got a laugh, but it's six in the morning!"

His spelling fingers fall apart mid-beg to stab the air instead, _You laughed!_

"That's because it was funny, but I'm _me_. You have to consider your audience, man! Who but us-and-ours laughs at anything, this time of the morning?"

That stops him. From his pout, Quinn knows he's taking the point. When his hands move again, they're gentler, hesitant, _I'm glad you said it was funny_.

"Oh, no doubt; hysterical. More of a prank than a gag, though."

One flat hand turning side to side, _Maybe, I guess_.

They discuss it as they collect their bags. The basic premise – playing announcements in Spanish on a train that's supposed to be in Italy, watching the cars empty, the panic, the angry demands, the people half-dressed, barely-dressed, struggling to get dressed – there might be some fun they could have with that. But that's for some other time; this morning, in the cold Ligurian countryside, it's no fun at all.

"Maybe you were right," Quinn sighs. "Maybe we shouldn't go to Rome. I don't even know where we are now, and they could be performing right now, and maybe it was a bad idea."

Head shaking, hands waving, _Not performing now._

"I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but-"

 _Six a.m._

It perks up. Quick as a light switch, from the sag and swinging arms to absolute energy again, black to red, Quinn boosts up on his shoulder to see farther, turning him to see in all directions. "Come on, we need a highway while it's still early. Delivery drivers, Pedrolino, they love a cute story to tell and you and me are a cute story in the making." It sees asphalt-black on the far side of the field and drops down again, taking off. Petey grabs it back by the shoulder.

 _How do you know it's the right highway?_

"It doesn't matter." Petey tugs it back again, begging some semblance of a plan, of logic. Quinn pulls away, patting his arm, "All roads, big guy, all roads…"

While they make their way across a basil field harvested down to stubble, with Quinn in front so it can go back to its ranting without Petey being able to interrupt, barring one brief scuffle when it oversteps the mark and is lifted squealing over his head, here are some ideas you may wish to consider:

First consider whether or not you believe in fate. If you do, it's easy; our clowns stumble across the right road and stand at the right side of it and flag down the right ride, all because they are meant to end up in Rome. Whatever the hitches and obstacles and doubts, there's nowhere else they can be. But a belief in fate isn't for everyone, and it's a big stretch to ask of a non-believer. Try a miracle then. Use the word sarcastically or in the traditional sense; there is a lot of old religion and old God in land like this. Say it's a miracle they're even headed in the right direction and aren't beaten and berated for daring to exist at this ironically-ungodly hour with high energy and painted faces.

Consider whether life rewards those who go at it with joy and reckless abandon. Consider coincidence and accident, which shouldn't need to be explained.

Whatever you decide, the outcome is the same. Four trucks, one bus, three protracted waits at rest stops, a dozen local news bulletins watched on tenterhooks in case they've missed the show after all, countless off-the-cuff performances, one absolutely incredible recipe for seafood linguine from a trucker's elderly mother and almost thirty-six hours later, Petey and Quinn are standing side by side on the Ponte Umberto I. Petey watches the traffic, stoic and content, while Quinn looks down into the Tiber. It thinks hard and, in consequence, feels just a touch of the old despair resurfacing.

"I mean, yeah, we got here. And don't get me wrong, I enjoyed getting here. You and me have good adventures, pal. But what do we do now? It's not like we've got any way to find _i Cavaliere_ … And I get kind of worried that they came all this way and there hasn't been so much as a mutter about them anywhere, it's just odd, y'know?" Petey's thick first finger pokes its bony shoulder. It has, in fact, been doing so for the last twenty seconds or so, but it's only now he pokes hard enough to be felt through all those layers of clothing. "If you're gonna tell me you told me so, I know that already." The poking continues, but Quinn is having a little trouble picking its head up again. This happens sometimes, when it talks so much to itself. Another poke or two and Petey can't wait anymore. He grabs the peak of Quinn's baseball cap, and Quinn spins desperate to stay beneath it. "What?! What is so-oh my… My, oh my…"

They both stare, heads slowly turning to follow a particular car along the road. The driver has other things on his mind and doesn't see them. The sidewalk crowd protects them too. But Petey and Quinn both stare open-mouthed at, and those among us who didn't decide on fate or miracles will have a hard time explaining, Jack Wilder crawling along in the queue of cars.

"Follow that Fiat, I guess…"

Down as far as the crossing, there isn't even any rush. They hang back, keeping a leisurely and curious pace, "Nah, it's a trap. It's a trap, Petey, our life is never this easy." But every time Quinn stalls or threatens to go back, he pulls it back into step. "Help me think; could they know we're here? You and me know we don't mean them any harm, but we _did_ follow them. What's that look like to the coulrophobe?" Petey grabs it hard, issuing a stern warning with one raised finger. "Okay, I'll watch my language, but that's what he is. Is there any way they could know we're here?"

The slightest pause; maybe Petey really is thinking about it. Maybe, though, he's just watching the crossing light – the second it changes he grab Quinn's hood and drags it running with him after the faster flow, across the street to anticipate the next corner.

Would you believe in a higher power if you could see the stoplights staying with them, how there is no corner where they don't see what direction Jack turns? The way an unfamiliar city opens to them, how alley short-cuts present themselves and their ways are clear, there could be more to it than serendipity. No obstacle presents itself that they don't enjoy surmounting – a detour across an awning, three sides of a market square negotiated by hanging onto the back of a flower truck. A side-street they cut through is a dead end, until the delivery van ahead of them pulls out, and in doing so almost causes an accident, stopping Jack's car until they can catch up.

Quinn no longer thinks this could be a trap. When such an impossible problem as this one might have been is so suddenly solved, it's natural to be suspicious of it. But when all the little hitches fall too, one after another like dominoes, when the world holds all the doors open for you, when the pursuit is so much goddamn _fun_ , that's different. Quinn would call it _golden_ , which might mean fate or God or anything.

The only thing you cannot call it is magic; they're on the wrong team for that.

Even when, finally, Jack turns a corner they can't see round, just when he might disappear forever, the game doesn't end. Quinn is a step ahead. The moment it skids out of the alley mouth, it darts back in, grabbing Petey back with it. Together, one head above the other, they lean out around the wall. The tiny blue car is pulled up at the kerb, abandoned askew. They hide themselves again to watch Jack rush out from behind the wheel and into a nearby store.

In his hurry, he doesn't bother to lock the car.

Quinn fumbles in a deep pocket and brings out one of the two phones it carries. It doesn't matter which one it gets; each only contains the number of the other. It slams this one against Petey's chest, barely waits for him to grab it before it begins to drag him towards the car. "Put me in the trunk." Petey balks and presses hard into the sidewalk. If he doesn't want to move, Quinn could never make him. "I'll text you wherever I end up. But we have to do it quick, before he comes back, so put me in the frigging trunk, Petey!" Still, he shakes his head, fast hands offering up every refusal he knows. "We came all this way and it's sitting right there and I'm not missing it. If you was any kind of clown you'd pack me in that _Cinquecento_ like your grandmother's groceries and not a second thought!"

Petey sticks to his refusal, for now. Quinn shrugs and stalks off alone, one eye on the store window, lowering to a crouch as it approaches. It glances back just once and Petey, in a rush that almost staves a finger or two, _Don't leave me alone_.

"There isn't room for both of us."

 _I hate you_.

"Like hell you do," and it opens the trunk just a little. Just enough to edge one foot through, its leg wriggling inside first, then the other foot bouncing up to the edge. That way, Quinn's weight always hangs on the door, holding it down where it won't be obvious that it's open. As it turns to crook its head and shoulders through the gap, it sees white sneakers coming toward it. Petey is hunkered by the opening by the time it has arranged itself comfortably. "You know you're my very best friend," it grins when he takes the edge of the lid out of its hand, sparing it the danger of bruised knuckles. "It'll be close to here. You saw him running; it's got to be nearly showtime. Wait and see, I'll be in touch before you can say - " The trunk slams. Wilder must be coming. "- Well, anything," Quinn tells the sneaker-steps pounding away fast, "Because you're mute…"

Actually, now that there's time to really think about this plan, it might have worked better with Petey in the trunk. Alright, he might have been a little tight on space, would have had to tuck his elbows in and his chin down, they might have had to cut off his legs at the knees, but there is one particular problem Petey would not have had to worry about. It's a big problem, and for as long it goes on it grows bigger and bigger. Quinn falls prey immediately.

The problem in question is, of course, the radio.

Wilder might be rushing but he found the time to tune in, or maybe there was a CD already in the car, but Quinn draws blood biting its tongue through _Don't Stop Believing_ , and could strangle Wilder for not doing the same. Quinn never knew what true pain was, until it had to keep silent while someone else sings. Badly, but what does that matter? Quinn and its kind don't believe in embarrassment; it would make their work significantly more difficult than it already is. Wilder is loud and joyful and that is all Quinn asks of anything in this world.

But he can thump on the wheel at every stoplight, and it has to pin one foot down under the other to stop it tapping. That just doesn't seem quite fair.

And when one eighties' classic fades out and is replaced by _Dead Ringer For Love_ , it shuts its eyes and swallows a groan. Muttering miserable under its breath, "Oh, Petey, maybe we _should_ have stuck together, because this must be what hell is like…"


	20. Chapter 20

Lula is out at the venue, doing final checks. Merritt is upstairs perfecting himself. Jack is out having the gas canisters refilled, since it was his desperate need for a final rehearsal which emptied them. Danny has been out all morning, paying a subtle visit to one of this evening's VIP guests, ensuring their attendance, and is now on his way back.

It's only the last of these Dylan cares about. The last of these has him waiting at the trattoria back door, sitting on a pile of upturned vegetable crates waiting for late collection. He's been waiting a while but it's fine. Sort of peaceful, in fact, listening to the noise from inside, the normality. There's comfort in other people's obliviousness. It helps him to believe that his decision to compartmentalize the preparations has paid off, that Dylan truly is the only one alive who knows every piece of it and every pin and stitch to hold the pieces together. Relaxing, too, to know all of that, to see it ahead, and be surrounded by a city that does not, could not possibly, suspect.

Actually, that's part of the reason he's waiting for Danny.

Since he arrived last night, Danny has avoided Dylan. Not in any obvious way, naturally, but he's always been the first to leave a room, to slip out when others were absorbed in details or, in Jack's case, sleeping. He devoted himself, and volunteered the devotion of everybody else, to making sure Merritt didn't see a single frame of Italian television last night. He also devoted himself to hating the compartmentalization of the plan heart and soul, and to questioning it at every possible turn. More than once Dylan could have risen to it. But resistance was wise, and he knew that. He has resisted. An argument is exactly what Danny wants – to be right, to stand over Dylan, to minimize his own recent mistakes – and exactly what they can't afford right now.

As things stand – shakily – something is going to give. And so, Dylan waits. The word 'ambush' is maybe a little dramatic but… But when Danny rounds the corner, into the shade, he is checking back over his shoulder, one last confirmation that he wasn't followed as he sweeps down his hood. He sees Dylan too late, already spotted. There's a visible stutter in his walk, fighting the urge to freeze like a rabbit or run like a deer, forcing himself to continue on. Dramatic maybe, but an ambush is what it is.

"How are the Guilianis?" Dylan calls.

"Considering a long walk in the piazza as a family later tonight."

"That'll be nice for them. There's bound to be something interesting going on."

Danny twitches the barest attempt at a smile and tries to walk on by. Dylan lets him try it. He doesn't even need to look at him, instead turning his face up to a shaft of sunlight, eyes closed. Danny goes nowhere; he stops in the doorway and Dylan tries not to congratulate himself too heartily. Derision begins gently, trying to needle, to wheedle in, "You seem very calm."

"It's the duck thing." Dylan has yet to open his eyes. "All under the surface."

"Swans. The saying is about swans."

"Ducks do it too. Sit down a second, Danny." Believe Dylan when he tells you, it was in no way intentional that the next stack of crates along the wall is a little shorter than his own. Don't ask if it's true or not, just do him a favour and believe it. It's for the best anyway; when Danny moves past him again Dylan feels not only the weight of the man himself displacing air, but the weight dragging along behind him. He's better off closer to the ground. Dylan gives him a second to settle, then asks, "What happened?"

Too much of a pause. "What did you do with her phone? I need to see it. She says the passcode is me. Name, initials, some variant on-"

"It's a four digit number. And your birthday's the fifteenth."

"How do you even know that?"

"We met because I put a tarot card in your shoe without you noticing and _that's_ what you choose to question?" This is when Dylan looks round. In a perfect world he'd get eye contact, but he doesn't have a perfect world, he has Atlas, and gets nothing. "I made it so this is just you and me for a reason. Tell me what happened."

Dramatic, but this was an ambush; the moment Danny throws up his hands and surrenders is very clear. There's a sort of click, a change of gears, from defence to defeat. Once that decision is made there is no need to rush him; when a truth can no longer be hidden, it demands to be told, and must be, too suddenly painful to be put away again.

"Rebecca knows. I know Merritt said she's not a danger, that she won't actually act but… I can't explain it." A pause there; the feeling is unfamiliar. This is the first time Danny has admitted to himself, "I can't explain it. It's like she's got a script."

"You say she knows. Knows what, Danny? Specifics."

"Us. The show, everything, the Eye. All of it."

Dylan shakes his head. Without doubt or hesitation, "That's not possible."

"I know," and Danny sounds just as certain. "But she… it was unnerving."

"Go on. Go on and use the word 'scared'. You'll feel better, I promise."

All Danny's spines flare out again, all the old prickled rage, the defences. He's back to his usual self and probably won't realize for a good hour or more, he really does feel better than he did a second ago. He rises, back straightening, hackles up, the twitchy hands coming up to tear the pieces out of the air he can't tear out of Dylan. They grab at words which are still eluding him when a too-small car engine rumbles at the corner. Danny turns his head to see, mumbling, "Yes, the powder-blue clown car is totally inconspicuous. Good pick, Dylan."

Dylan might have told him about the minimal choice on last minute rentals and the theory of incongruity, that this minute bubble of a car is so unlikely to contain anything even within range of Jack Wilder or any Horseman that the sight would be dismissed by any onlooker as a trick of the eye, except for Danny's using that damn C-word. By the time the shudder has rolled down his back and dispersed, it's too late to say anything. A flash of smug, this one tiny victory, and Danny is restored to the height of his powers. In light of this, Dylan can let it go.

Jack is, by now, easing himself out from behind the wheel, all elbows and angles. Stretching the cricks out of his neck, "Dylan, never make me drive this thing again, or drive anything in this city. That was the longest hour of my life not spent in an interrogation r-"

"Oh, please, you _slept_ through your interview with me," Dylan fires back. "Did you get the gas?"

Jack reaches back in, head and shoulders snaking and tilting, to get it from the passenger seat. He hands a canister to Danny and holds onto one. "You guys look sort of serious…"

It isn't like him. Not that Dylan would ever call any of his own team 'easily distracted' but generally Jack's not difficult to get around. The mention of interrogation rooms had seemed like a gift, too easy, a road it would be all too simple to lead him down. So it's no insult to Jack, to say that his sudden insight is worrying. Dylan oughtn't let it show, but catches himself too late. Jack sees his own signals echoed, and his wordless fears deepen.

"We were just discussing your counting," Danny cuts in, smiling. Dylan flinches; that sounded like support. That sounded like Danny saving him when he was about to make things worse than they already were. He watches, wide-eyed and suspicious, waiting for the knife to twist. But it never does or, at least, not in Dylan's chest anyway. Entirely focussed on Jack, Danny continues, "Did you watch any of those Sesame Street videos I linked you to? _You_ might not feel it's important, but to Lula, you spending ninety seconds with a purple felt vampire could be the difference between life and death."

"I'd say The Count is more lilac than purple," Dylan says, still so shocked he can barely manage above a mumble. He speaks mostly to acknowledge Danny, and in a minor way to fill the gap while anger is superseding any concerns Jack may have been allowing to preoccupy him, the brief gap where all eyes are on the younger teammate while he grits his teeth, tries to fight it back. Dylan and Danny watch with the cool reserve of scientists in a lead bunker, waiting to see if the bomb will go off.

Eventually, biting every word like a bullet, "Dylan, tell _Daniel_ when was the last time I messed up the count."

"This morning?"

"That was your fault, you were talking to me."

"Somebody might have to talk to you tonight."

Muttered frustration, another flare of rage, so intense that Jack's riveted audience draw back as one. They're almost a little disappointed to watch him swallow it. "Nobody better talk to me again. Not about this." They're sitting so close they can hear his teeth grind. "I'm serious. Not ever." Jack shifts the weight of the gas canister in his arms so that he can charge past them, straight inside without having to awkwardly elbow his way through the door.

In sync, and each with the same half-smiling sigh, Danny and Dylan both rise to follow him into the stairwell. But while they're still outside, and out of earshot, "Are you happy now? Now that you've finally picked a fight with somebody who didn't deserve it, are you happy?"

"Way more than I know I should be."

It might be irrelevant to mention just now, but as they turn around, the back seat of the rental car begins to jolt. And there is one perfect moment where any of the three Horsemen might glance over his shoulder and see, whether through the door or the first floor window, the diamond-patterned Doc Marten come shooting out between the cushions when they finally give way.

But when Jack feels them in the stairwell behind him, and flings back the only ammunition he's got, "Hey, guess what I saw while I was out – a _clown_ ," he's not referring to Quinn's amateur escapology. Dylan freezes at the landing beneath him. Jack holds down his grin same as he did the fear and rage not moments ago. "Should have seen it, Dylan, huge big feet, big hands, white face, whole nine yards."

"…But just the one, right?"

Somewhere distant, way beyond the horizons of Dylan's thinking just now, Danny starts up a stream, "Okay, I seem to miss all the conversations which explain what clowns have got to do with anything. If I were a less secure guy I'd think this was on me, this was a joke at my expense, but-"

"Jack, I can _hear_ you thinking up all the stories, like you're going to tell me there's a convention or something and the city's infested, but this is important. How many? It wasn't a pair? They travel in pairs."

"What, like that's union rules or something?"

"The ones you need to worry about travel in pairs. How many?"

"Just one, alright?! It's _clowns_ , Dylan, you can relax. I kind of like them."

Danny mutters, "I don't."

"You're you, though."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, man, you're just… You're not the clown type."

"Please, what exactly _is_ the c-?" The bickering picks up where it left off. The reactions all around it are comic-book-clear; Jack is starting to look distinctly harried, Danny is defending himself, thinking he's the only one out of the loop, and Dylan is drawn away in his own thoughts and considerations. Again, maybe it has no immediate bearing on the situation, but it ought to be noted they are all within sight of the third floor window and if any of them would look, they'd see Quinn just beaching it's exhausted upper half out through the car's sunroof, the dramatic heaving of its chest, arms flung out to its sides.

"Do you even _want_ to be the clown type?" Jack groans. He's at the top of the stairs now, waiting for someone to let him into the apartment.

"Not especially."

Dylan nods approvingly at Danny's admission, slaps one of his two very free hands between his shoulder blades. A good answer. It could have been stronger, more definite, could have been a solid No, but given the circumstances and the needling, sniping nature of the ongoing argument, Dylan will take a smug equivocation where he can get it. A nice, negative answer; sometimes Danny makes it very hard to stay proud of him, generally because he's so damn proud of himself, but this isn't one of those times.

Before he unlocks the door, Dylan takes the second canister from Danny and puts it in the crook of Jack's hanging arm. "You know those have to go over to Lula, right?"

"What? Why'd you let me get all the way up here?"

"You tell me," Dylan shrugs, "You were in front. Way out in front, actually."

"Sort of stomping," Danny joins.

"More of a flounce than a stomp, wouldn't you say?"

"I could get behind 'flounce', yes."

"Guys, come on!" When the door opens, Jack tries to follow them inside. The valve on the top of each canister strikes the doorway, barring him. He backs up just one step to turn sideways and finds the door closed before he can move forward again. For as much as a minute he stands right where he is, expecting someone to come back, something to give. A minute is about as long as it takes for them to explain to Merritt what happened, and for Merritt to laugh. When he hears that, and his arms are already starting to ache, Jack turns and starts down the stairs again.


	21. Chapter 21

As has previously been outlined, the view from the Horsemen's balcony is practically perfect. And if you're the type to look out over the spires and domes and seek the faraway horizon, there is absolutely nothing to mar it. Look a little closer, however, look and see what's right in front of you, and there is a blemish.

Directly across the piazza, so that up on the balcony Dylan has the very best seat in the house, is a building which was once virtually identical to the one he's standing on. That other façade just had the misfortune of being the first to crumble. One of those terrible tragedies you hear about from time to time, like train crashes or forest fires – a busy afternoon, one flaw in a pillar that became a crack and dropped the support out from under a crossbeam, breaking another pillar as it fell, so on and so forth until the paved street below was nothing but rubble and ruin.

Amongst the architectural remains, mortal ones; four people, ultimately, didn't make it out of harm's way.

But there are two kinds of tragedy. You have what might be called the true kind, the horrible accidents, the unforeseeable, the plain bad luck. And then the other kind. Like train crashes, for instance, like forest fires. Like a buckled track that should have been repaired or a cigarette left smouldering on dry leaves. 'Tragedy' is a word that gets used, all too often, to erase the _reasons_.

Over a year since the collapse, the front of that building is still no more than a ragged hole. Behind a curtain of green industrial net, what used to be a first floor conference room yawns, dark and bedraggled from exposure. Although, if you think the place is a mess now, you should have seen it last week. You should have seen it when Dylan visited here first. He's not too modest to admit, it took real imagination to visualize it as a performance space.

Not too modest and besides, he's got proof; he's got a whole team having trouble visualizing it. He's got Merritt on the phone, just double-checking, not doubting, just making sure, somebody did test the on-stage camera last night, right?

This is the downside, when a left hand can't know what a right hand is doing; the left hand develops perfectly normal, if inconvenient, doubts that the right hand is doing its job. With the work split between five hands, a lot of doubt has built up.

"Everything is exactly as it was for the last rehearsal in Paris," Dylan says, with the practiced calm of a psychiatrist of especially violent patients. "I'm telling you we're ready. And if you can't have faith in me, have it in the other Horsemen." Such a gentle explanation, so patiently and sincerely given, with the extra sting of guilt thrown in for good measure, is so readily accepted that Dylan turns it into a text verbatim. It suffices to answer Lula (wondering if everything is definitely, one-hundred-percent, all good with the sound), and Jack (did somebody take care of the rope rig?), and as a polite response to Danny's voicemail regarding the repairs to a hook on Lula's fourth layer.

He's got one other message. It's from an unrecognized number which, when he tries to check it by calling, claims not to exist. It's with a certain trepidation that Dylan eventually opens it, and with great relief that he reads, _Bonne chance._

He looks far too long at the message, and jumps when the phone begins to ring. He answers, patience just beginning to fray, "We're getting a little close to the wire, here, Lula, if you're stil-"

"I just saw Chase McKinney in the crowd."

Oh. Dylan relaxes, leans heavier on the stone balustrade, glances away to check the police scanner crackling softly by his elbow. "Don't worry about it."

" _Don't worry about it_?! Are you _crazy_? And this is me, an actual crazy person, one doctor short of a diagnosis-"

"Excuse me?"

"You need three to agree and one of them was kind of a hippy, believes everybody's curable, but my point is-"

"I get your point. And I'm saying don't worry about it."

"Quite apart from my absolute inability to ignore this, have you considered the _nuclear event_ likely to ensue if Merritt sees what…?" She trails away. Dylan waits, glances at his watch. Four seconds, five, and Lula comes back cooler, gentler. "Left-hand-right-hand?"

"Yeah."

"I don't like left-hand-right-hand."

It won't happen again. Dylan doesn't like it either. But there's no time to tell her that now, and no point in it either; he'll get them all together afterward, tell them then. In fact, he'll make a promise, so that there's no going back. But right now, he says, "Hang up and put your earpiece in; it's almost eight."

The church bells, played from a recording these days instead of rung, get shut off at dusk. But on the stroke of eight, as if they were about to chime, there's a hum in the speakers around the piazza. A rushing fountain slows to a burble. The very astute share a puzzled glance, but no more than this.

When the streetlights flash out, well, then there's a little more of a reaction.

Behind the green net over the building site, floodlights flare.

And a voice, very definitely of the Horsemen's _preferred_ McKinney, is projected out over the crowd, clicking his tongue with distaste, "Who lights up an eyesore like that?" Those around Merritt in the evening throng hear the real voice close by and gather, and the first mutter of excitement starts to run through them, like static, like the tension before lightning. Just briefly, he sets a tender hand on the shoulder of an elderly woman standing nearby, before he starts towards the stage.

Ten yards away, Jack slips down his hood and passes between a young boy and his mother, a smile and a friendly wink. "Doesn't look like anybody's home."

"Well," and Lula stands up from the edge of the fountain, waving to the family of tourists she's been sitting unnoticed next to, "let's check." A little hop from the wall to the centre keeps her feet dry. The fountain's lights come back on to present her to the audience, to make them all watch when she snaps her fingers, and the screen drops.

That's the first gasp. There's always one. It comes right before the first wild cheer, but any of our performers will tell you, the gasp is more important. The gasp means a thousand times more to them. That moment of wonder, of _how_ – whatever reason they might have for performing these days, that gasp is why they all got into this in the first place. That gasp brought them here and it buoys them up now, carries them drifting away from any doubts and into the script. By both hands, left and right, they use that gasp to seize control.

"Oh," Lula says, of their makeshift stage, "no, there… there really _is_ no one home. Um..."

Jack and Merritt mutter amongst themselves – 'running late', 'turbulence', 'air traffic control'. They're cut off abruptly when, fast as falling, Danny drops down from the floor above. The wires that drop him are too thin to be seen.

He hits the stage already walking toward the front. "Give me a break, it's a long walk from Paris. Buena notte, signore e signori."

Now the applause. Now the real first cheer. In fact, since Danny is the only one in a position to stop it, this is probably allowed to continue a little longer than it ought to. Lula pauses, covering her stage mic to mutter to an onlooker, "Showboating, that's all it is." The man shrugs, whether because he disagrees or because his English is minimal, Lula couldn't say.

Already in position, Jack glares up, tapping his watch.

Danny ignores all of this. After all, he didn't get to stick around for his bows in Paris. He'll take what he can get now. Really, he's surprised he gets away with it as long as he does before Dylan sighs down his ear, "This overgrown teenager…"

At that he claps his hands, mumbles those bashful thank-yous he keeps having to practice so they still sound genuine, tries to bring down a hush, "But really, if you know who we are at all, you know this is more than just a show. There's a reason we're here. And by here, I mean _here_. There'd have to be a reason. If we really wanted to perform in a ruin, Rome has some better-looking options on offer. No, we _chose_ this one because… well, because it should never have existed in the first place. There are four groups of people here among you tonight who know this better than anyone. And we'll explain why in just a second but first I have to help this idiot actually get on stage –" Danny points, finally giving a little attention over to Jack.

For most of this introduction, Jack has been standing on a crate at ground level, stage right. He's made the odd jump, gotten hold of the edge above them, but so far been unsuccessful in climbing on up. Now he puts up one hand for Danny to take hold at the wrist. The extra lift does the trick. "There's a ladder," Danny bites. "There's a ladder at the other end."

"Well, I was at _this_ end."

"You might have climbed up yourself if there wasn't a deck of cards in your hand." Still holding Jack's wrist, Danny raises the offending hand for anybody to see, shaking his head, "Unbelievable. You know we're stuck up here tonight? There's no up-close?"

"You want to bet? Give me a name, man."

Danny tries to refuse. He's got an explanation to get on with, after all. But Jack insists and, back and forth, the spat continues, timed to a fraction of a second, down to Merritt's poorly disguised voice calling out of the audience for a name, _nome_ , until Danny finally snaps. "Giovanni." Between laughter and groaning, the audience amplifies Jack's unimpressed silence until, finally, "Alright, what about _Doctor_ Giovanni, hm?"

"It's a little better, I guess." Jack turns to the audience, walks back to the edge which eluded him before. "C'è un dottore in sala, per favore?"

"Right here!" Lula calls. Still holding court at the fountain, she's on the side nearest the performance now, pointing down from the wall on a balding, liver-spotted head. "I've got a Doctor John." She raises the cheer for the bemused, barely-willing doctor, starts the applause, so the noise covers her. With the crowd doing the work she can get down from the fountain, position herself in front, waving to pretend she's still signalling the stage. At the wrist of her hanging hand, ignored by her side, you can just see the ace of hearts starting to slip up out of her glove. The distances and angles are all wrong for Jack to really pitch this one from the stage. He'll be disappointed, but there's nothing they can do about it.

In plan B, the presentation is all the same. The countdown, the drama, the pretence, that doesn't change. All that changes is that Jack only palms the card. But he throws nothing just as convincingly, and from over her shoulder, Lula flicks its twin so it slams flat against the doctor's forehead.

There's only half a cheer this time. The other half of the audience is laughing at Jack's smile, his eyes fixed wordlessly in the side of Danny's head until, "Cute. Cute trick. Now can we finish telling people why we're here?"

"Don't you think we should tell them why _they're_ here first? I feel sort of bad about that. See, you all _think_ you came here by choice tonight. And some of you don't really know why. Some of you swore you'd _never_ come back here, and certainly never wanted to see this building. But we needed you here. So we cheated, just a little."

That's a cue for Dylan. Back on the balcony, by no more than three keystrokes, he wakes up the screen behind them. In the dark behind the floodlights there wasn't so much as a suggestion of it on shadows. Now it flares bright, showing the blue and yellow set of a late-night talk show. Mercifully this version of the video has been silenced. It remains, however, a video of Chase McKinney giving an interview about his recently overturned conviction. It's a near-perfect replica of several dozen he's already given in English-speaking countries.

Danny steps in front of the video, deliberately turning his back to draw another laugh. "Now, almost all of the people we're referring to, with the exception of one particular family who turn off all their televisions for the entire period of Lent and gave me a little extra work to do this morning, will have seen this already. Chase McKinney here was on your TVs night before last and-"

"And here tonight, _in carne ed ossa_!"

Danny plays startled, staggering back into Jack from stage left where a ladder comes up from the street and where, it would seem, the less welcome twin is currently ascending. He is perfect in every respect, except that he is perhaps more sombrely dressed than has previously been known. Maybe prison has its effects, even with the term cut short. But from his hair to his too-neat beard, the smug stretch of his smile and the ooze in his walk, he is perfect.

"Wait," Jack mutters, barely loud enough for the mic to pick up. "Nah, hold on… Wait…"

Chase continues, seemingly oblivious to Jack circling round behind him. "So long as the broadcast is live, it's really not all that difficult, _reaching_ into your living rooms, out of the goggle-box and into the brainbox, doing a little tinkering."

Jack's curious hand hovers a moment before it closes on those orangish curls. When the wig pulls off in his fist he recoils first, as if from some small, ugly animal. He shakes it to test if it's alive or dead, and finds to his shock that it turns into a black pork-pie hat. This he replaces on the now bald head and seems to like what he sees a lot better. He leans around the indeterminate McKinney to give Danny a thumbs up.

Chase doesn't get to finish what he's saying about cadences and the subtle implantation of thought pathways before Danny reaches up and rips the beard off his face.

Merritt hisses and pulls away, biting his tongue to keep from cursing live on stage. But by the time he wheels back, he is himself again, has shaken the mincing hunch out of his shoulders, is working the fixed grin off his face. This done, the applause fading, he turns to walk into the wings. Jack grabs him back by the collar, "Where are you going?"

"Somewhere with a shower."

"C'mon, it's okay. It's over now."

Jack brings him back, with back slaps and mumbles of comfort, while Danny picks up, "Now, we fully understand if there's anybody out there who doesn't like this approach but… But you're here now, and we'd advise you to stick around. What comes next, you might like a little better. For instance – "

" _Ahem_!"

Throwing his hands up, pretending a rage he has to swallow, Danny winces. "I don't believe this. There is a _ladder_ , Lula."

Between the two of them, they reprise the argument he already had with Jack. It's witty, a cute bit, and covers up what they both already know, which is that the ladder wouldn't work. Unlike the crate, the ladder is not rigged with a magnetic strip to grab the metal weights in the hem of Lula's coat, nor with the rolling device inside to whip it away and make it vanish. Lula stands her ground on that damn crate, not out of sheer stubbornness, but so that when Jack and Merritt take an arm each and lift her up, her first transformation is seamless. She loses a layer of sweeping green and, in the same heartbeat, comes up in gleaming silver.

There's a moment, hidden in a cheer which is all for her, where Lula joins the others. A moment of eye contact and, more than that, faith. From four disparate parts, now united, each accepts at once that there was nothing to doubt. Once you spot it, the reason why is blindingly obvious - right hand, left hand, the hand hidden and the hand with something hidden in it, none of them would ever let the others down.

Introductions done, misgivings set aside, there's only one thing left for them to accomplish; they've got a show to perform, and _preferably_ before the cops get here.


	22. Chapter 22

The already busy square packs as the evening goes on and word spreads. The crowd packing up tight to the stage form the final and most effective barrier between the Horsemen and any law enforcement that might arrive. There's one already, in fact. Merritt clocked him from the stage and fed it back to Dylan for a closer watch. But from what Dylan sees through his binoculars, the man is only watching, hasn't so much as reached for his radio yet.

But the best seats in the house belong to those who were waiting before it even began. Petey and Quinn have been waiting all day, have maintained a level of excitement that would exhaust any normal human being.

Petey is right in the front row, where the green netting fell. His toes are under the edge of it by now from wishing he could be even closer. But the position is good; if he cranes up just a little, he can keep an eye on Quinn. After Atlas made his elaborate entrance, Quinn realized the rafters were there and took off. It arrived up above round about McKinney's introduction, and since then has been scrambling from beam to beam for the best view. From time to time, just a flicker of his eyes, Petey checks that a certain shudder at the edge of his vision wasn't a slip, a potential fall, that maybe he shouldn't find some way to make it come back down.

He doesn't worry about Quinn getting injured. In their profession, that's not uncommon. But how would he ever explain to Mom and Dad what they're doing in Rome in the first place?

Combine these distractions with his total fascination with what's happening on stage, and it's no surprise that Petey doesn't notice what's going on right in front of him. Lower his chin just a couple of degrees, and he would be looking straight thought a glassless ground-floor window with a damaged frame. He wouldn't see much, but there is movement in the dark. And if you were interested, if you were curious, if you were in a mood to pick up on the little things and stay a little worried, you might investigate movement in the dark, when there are no stage hands and all the performers are on stage.

Unfortunately for all involved, that's a hypothetical situation which remains hypothetical, because at just the moment he might have seen that, Petey is watching Lula May pass behind Atlas' back in a silver dress and step out the other side in tight black pants and a billowing blouse. He's clapping like a seal.

As if she never noticed the change, Lula announces, "Maybe, ladies and gentlemen, you're starting to see the theme between our tricks this evening."

Jack's lips moving, but Merritt's voice speaking, "It's a little trite, coming from magicians, but-"

And the roles reversed, "Things aren't always what they seem."

"A little like these –" Atlas tosses a silver rag, maybe Lula's last dress, into the air. Somewhere high above his head it suddenly changes, stiffens, gets heavy. What comes plummeting down on his waiting hand is a stack of papers, and nothing like silver at all. "Something else which looked like one thing and turned out to be another, these are _contracts_ , folks. Lula here borrowed these just yesterday from the headquarters of a company named Vesta Construction, which I think some of you will have heard of…"

"In fact, we'd like to thank them for providing tonight's venue." Merritt steps up to take the sheaf, riffling the pages, "See, Vesta Construction should have undertaken the restoration of this building more than five years before it ever collapsed. But through delays and dodges and, mostly, missing funds, that didn't happen."

Petey's a step behind most of the audience. He's never heard this tale before. But most of those gathered have lived it, in one way or another, most of them call out support and anger and feel the same coming back to them from the stage. They hear their own story told as they themselves have understood it – as a struggle and an injustice. In amongst them they have found the VIP guests, the families of those who died, and they have borne them up, brought them forward, rallied around them. It's an atmosphere as much of protest as pleasure, unity as much as wonder.

For the record, both the clowns are thinking the same thing – already planning the perfectly serious discussion they might have later, that this is a different approach to theirs. A clown's vocation is to help others forget for a moment the boring and the bad. This is the opposite of that. This is Jack Wilder stepping up to state very plainly, "Everybody who signed one of these contracts did so on the understanding that there would be a full and public confession who was responsible for what happened here. That confession never came."

"Which is why we've come to confess for them," Merritt announces. "And to say, to hell with contracts like these."

He throws the stack over his shoulder, all of the pages separating, fluttering like doves. But they never hit the ground, and somehow they are stacked again and back with Lula. She carries them to Danny, "Contracts designed to steal the shirt off your back," and as she passes them to him her blouse goes with them and leaves her in a close cut button-down.

"Not worth the paper they're written on." The contracts fall through Danny's hands as if they were a shredder, a confetti which, again, never touches the ground. Instead, it snows briefly on Jack, at another part of the stage entirely, and the papers are intact again in his hands. You can see, even right in the front row Petey can see, the thickness, the weight and definition of the block. But when Jack folds it in half there's no resistance, and it seems to somehow become one sheet.

"Contracts which are now –" And a couple more folds, which distract him, " – Bear with me, I haven't made one of these since grade school – " Another few folds and he smooths down the wings of his bright new paper airplane to a spatter of amused applause. " – Available in both English and Italian –" Another pause, this time while Merritt claps his hands together flat in front of him. When they clamshell open again, he's holding a laptop open. Jack takes careful aim and throws the plane. It vanishes into the computer. " – Via all good search engines."

They threw the contracts onto the internet. It's as simple as that. Nothing will ever convince Petey otherwise, however often Quinn might try to tell him about the wire guides it saw from up above and the black cloth bag McKinney was holding between the computer and his chest to hide the plane. If he's really honest, he saw some of these things himself. He just doesn't care.

That stands him in good stead for the next part; though anybody who's ever done circus work knows how McKinney can 'hypnotise' rope and make it weave knots around Atlas' feet, Petey can still enjoy it. He enjoys the joke, when they pretend Jack can't tie a knot – "So, wait, does the bunny go around the tree first or down the hole first?" – and enjoys watching, via the camera they have up on stage with them, feeding to the screen behind them, Lula tying Danny's arms. Those knots must be full of slips and hitches. Petey knows this. He doesn't care. He's applauding first, last and loudest when Atlas simply walks out of all these restraints, shrugging them off like a jacket, to show those watching how the only thing loopholes are good for is getting out of knots.

Here comes the second time the clowns both find themselves planning the same conversation for the train back to Paris; that this is where they and the Horsemen overlap. For both, the real trick is giving the audience permission not to think.

The spell is broken for a split second, when all of the Horsemen are distracted at once. The gazes turned inward, Lula and Merritt both touching their earpieces, they all get a message. The unfamiliar cellphone in Petey's pocket buzzes too, and he finds a text from Quinn. _911_. Cops incoming; maybe from somewhere up there Quinn can see the lights.

There's a change in the magicians. They are no less polished or streamlined, the hand-offs are just as seamless, but they move faster now, and with nervous purpose. Lula, in particular, seems to be bracing herself. McKinney steps forward to cover the sudden activity. "Ladies and gentlemen, we've just been informed, and those sirens you can just about hear should be telling you, that some people are on their way to bring the curtain down on our little show." A murmur of disappointment from the audience, a groan of it from Petey. He glances up and sees Quinn hanging its head. "I know, I know, but before we go… In honour of our having well and truly _burned_ Vesta Construction here tonight, and Vesta herself being the goddess of the hearth –" Lula is passing behind him, carrying one of the gas canisters to a waiting Jack. She never gets there, because Merritt reaches out blind and grabs her by the upper arm. "We're going to set our own Miss May here on fire."

Lula makes a very good show of sudden panic. "Excuse me? What? Did… Did we discuss this? Was this in the plan for the show?"

Jack comes to get the canister from her. "Don't worry, you'll be fine."

"No, no, the way I heard it I'll be on _fire_."

"True," says Merritt, who hasn't broken stride or taken his eyes off the audience. "But you will _also_ be fine. Because we are going to put you to _sleep_." With sudden force and the shock of suddenly shouting, he uses his grip on her arm to spin her across. Lula falls draped over his waiting arm, limp as a doll until Merritt sets her carefully on her feet. "And we're going to make you as fireproof as some companies with good lawyers believe they are."

The process of mesmerising Lula covers the set-up. Danny and Jack produce from the wings a steel ladder, a four-sided screen, a fire axe and the other gas canister. The onstage camera comes back, first to demonstrate that Lula is in a state of deep trance. She is, wisely perhaps, kept that way while Jack walks the camera across the stage. "Now, we _wanted_ to bring a couple of you up here to check out this floor and confirm to all your friends out there, there aren't any trapdoors. They're old boards, and they look like they might give any minute, but that's not anything we can plan for. Time restraints, and the possibility of ending up in restraints ourselves, mean we can't do that. Please don't feel cheated; this trick isn't performed with trapdoors anyway."

"No," Danny agrees, "It's performed with a trick screen. We close the front and Lula steps out the back, waits for the flames to stop, and steps back in fireproof. That's traditionally how this trick is done."

"Which is why we have these steel bars." Jack shows the ladder up huge on the screen, rung by rung as Danny runs the shaft of the fire axe down them to prove that they're solid. "So she's not getting out that way. These screens are cotton too, so you'd see if it had been torn. And you're going to see it burn."

"So… wait, how _is_ this trick done?" Danny asks.

Jack turns the camera to Merritt. "You heard the man; she's fireproof."

"We're _trusting_ that?" Danny walks back into the wings and comes back with a fire extinguisher. It doesn't get the laugh it ought to. There are nerves in the audience too and, though still distant, those sirens come over loud and clear when the Horsemen aren't speaking.

Petey's got another text from the rafters, _OMG so excited I'm gonna fall!_

 _Don't fall._ _Mom would kill me._

By the time his reply is gone, Lula has been wakened from her trance and is being led to the fire-trap. She is bright and bubbly now, unafraid. "Hang on a sec," she says, before she steps inside, "I like this dress, I don't want it to smell of smoke."

The sweep of her hand and her glittering gown vanishes along a wire, down her arm and up Merritt's sleeve. Beneath it she is in simple black which, as precaution, really is made of the same flame-retardant material as the lining of firefighters' uniforms. The applause this time is barely a ripple. Later, when there's time to analyse, you might notice that the tension reached this breathless height when Lula gave her earpiece and microphone to Jack. You see that microphone go and you have to wonder what kind of sound they might be afraid of magnifying.

Only the sirens break the silence as the front of the screen is closed around Lula. If you're close and watching closer, you can see Jack's lips moving, beginning the count.

It is at this most awkward of moments that the phone in Petey's pocket goes right ahead and _rings_. He ignores it. Three full rings, he ignores it.

But up above the stage, Quinn has scuttled out from over Lula's box. It is right at the front of the stage and waving for attention. Something desperate about it; something begging, trying to make him understand, this is not a joke. It is already crying out when Petey answers, " - Under the stage!" Quinn cries. "Something's wrong, she's in there, but she's stamping her foot like she's supposed to go somewhere, and they can't see her, the sirens-"

The sirens are so loud that even with microphones and the tannoys, the Horsemen are raising their voices. At a glance, Petey sees the lock at the front of the screen rattle. Danny and Merritt are in front of it and Jack can't see it around the corner.

Quinn might still be talking but Petey jams the phone away and darts forward, finally seeing the empty window frame far too late. He dives through and, once inside, hears the screech of struggling machinery.

The hydraulic panel that should be dropping Lula out of danger is on his right. Either side of it, metal scaffolding posts have been jammed in against the workings, holding it tight to the ceiling.

At a rush, he puts his shoulder to the first one and bounces off. Another rush, seconds Lula doesn't have, and it jars, but doesn't move.

On his last shove, and the last moment before Jack switches on the gas, the bar pulls free.

Suddenly loose, it springs away, taking Petey with it. He hears the audience gasping, applauding the fire itself, from flat on his back. The other bar can't hold the panel on its own and the mechanics slam shut on themselves.

Petey rolls to his feet when he sees Lula heaving, breathless and half-crying in the dark. He doesn't need to know the trick to know she's got even less time now than she did before. She has to be back in position by the time the screens burn away. One last rush brings him to her, climbing up on the panel to kneel next to her.

She doesn't see him, doesn't know he's there. Her eyes are turned up, out through the ceiling into the pillar of fire that might have still had her.

In a gentle fist, Petey puts out the singeing smoulder in a curling lock of hair.

He lifts himself slightly, leaning over to look her in the eyes but there's nothing to see. They're dark and cold, shut-off in the knowing of what came so close just now. So his fist tightens, tugs, dropping her head back down to centre. Her gaze fixes on him. A flicker of recognition; maybe she remembers his face or just wants to ask what he's doing here. But it's only a moment, and it vanishes when she realizes how few of those she has left. Petey sees the change in her. He takes her by the waist and helps her stand.

Trauma disappears with the steadying of her feet. Or, if that's too much to say, it is filed away for later. The lights behind her eyes flicker back to life.

At the click of her heels back on top of the panel, Lula shoves Petey off the edge. Because no matter what she might be feeling, she can still do this. Lula doesn't have to feel _anything_ to be able to do this. She can do it because she knows the moves like breathing, and because there is no trick if the girl is not back in her box when the smoke clears. She rips off the black outfit and tosses it away. Petey catches it, unable to take his eyes off her. She's more impressive now than any trick he's seen tonight or ever.

Up above, Jack's countdown ends. Petey staggers back when the panel slams up into the ceiling, again. All glittering purple, Lula is thrown back to the stage so fast she blurs.

All of it done without a word to the clown who saved her, all of it done without a word at all.

Petey waits exactly where she left him until he hears the roar of the crowd drowning out the police sirens. Even if, until now, you couldn't understand how a woman who just kissed death as it passed her could straighten up and go on with the show, you ought to understand it when you hear that noise.

But someone else hears it too. Someone hears it and yells, "Damn!"

The voice comes from a damp, abandoned corridor to Petey's left. Heavy footsteps follow hard, coming back this way. They come too quickly for Petey to hide. The owner of the voice sees him while they still have the cover of darkness.

The steps turn again and take off. Petey is less than a heartbeat behind.


	23. Chapter 23

That roar Petey heard goes on forever. Lula's return is triumphant, not least because the audience were more than aware how real and immediate the danger was. No one could have looked at the other Horsemen and thought there was anything fake about their reactions, simply because there wasn't.

They all felt it. The moment the jammed panel finally dropped, it shook the entire stage. And each of them felt his heart stop, knowing how close to the wire that was, knowing something must have gone wrong and they missed it. They faltered. Just a word mumbled here and there, a missed step, all borne out of indecision – cut their losses now, kill the trick? Or keep the count and trust their comrade? Really, it all fell to Jack. He was the one controlling when the gas cut out, when the panel would bring Lula back. Jack kept the count.

And here she stands. Alive and unharmed, and Lula is stronger than all of them because she never falters once. She is all flourish and flashing crystals, being brought forward to take her bow. Not a flicker in her smile, not a stumble on her heels, and because she gave up her microphone before, who's to know she can hardly breathe, never mind speak?

You have to know her. You have to know that poise does not come naturally, that a straight back and strong shoulders are not her. That she ought to be laughing like something unhinged right now. When you know her you see that this is all wrong, all forced. This is for show. The red and blue sweep of police lights erases the tears running down her face while Merritt and Danny are presenting her to her adoring, endlessly yelling crowd.

Jack's not quite with them just yet. He's rolling back the screens, now without their cotton. For the planned exits, the stage needs to be clear, easily navigable. There at the back, where it's dark enough to disappear, Jack lingers. Just a half-step, just his toes pushing out behind him, and Dylan is in his ear, "No. Where are you going? It's done. We are out, we are clear. Stick to the plan."

Jack nods. All of that sounds right, sounds sensible. And Dylan has rarely, if ever, steered him wrong.

If Dylan was down here, if he could see Lula, if he had all the facts, he'd feel the same way Jack does.

It's not a decision. It's nothing, a speck of dirt on a frame of film, the slightest speckle of a thought and Jack draws back into the shadow. Slowly until he knows he's out of sight – he knows it because it's the last thing he hears from Dylan before he puts the earpiece in his pocket – but then he runs. He, like all the Horsemen, has learned his way around this building in the past week. There are nineteen routes just for exits. He swings onto the stairwell and over the rail, falling into the floor below.

The scaffolding bars are still on the floor, flung out on either side of the platform. An immediate visual answer on what happened, but not how, or who.

It's that last one Jack really wants answered. 'Who', that's an answer he can do something with.

So when he hears the footsteps running, Jack might as well go blind. He follows sound and a leading rage that swells in his chest, opens him up so the booted echoes reverberate, hollow him out. He tries to tell himself he'd do this if it had been anyone he cared about. This is basic loyalty. Nothing to do with Lula stiff and speechless or the fact that he can still smell smoke. Nothing to do with the spots blurring his vision because he stared into the fire, whether he could see through it or not, for any sign at all. He prayed – briefly, but heartfelt, and when he thinks of it later he'll remember to thank whoever heard him – but that's got nothing to do with it.

His liar's heart insists, it could have been Merritt or Danny or Dylan trapped, and he'd be doing this self-same thing. In itself, this may not even be the lie. The lie might not come in until you factor feelings into it.

Or, put simply, Jack might be _thinking_ a little more, except that it was Lula who might have burned, and he who started the fire.

A little more thought, maybe he wouldn't fix so intently on the nearest set of footsteps. He'd listen closer and know there was another, fading as they get farther ahead. This leader knows the building, has learned it like Jack has, the way you have to if you have a job to do. Whether that's magic or attempted murder, you have to know the layout. Jack should see all of this; there's a fox-cunning in the logic that suits him better than most.

But Jack's blind. Jack fixates on the nearest steps. Stumbling and disoriented, chasing someone they can't see with no idea where the doors and dead-ends are, struggling already to keep up. He's losing his quarry already, and so Jack is never even aware that one existed.

When the only acknowledge steps soften, Jack softens his own. He follows the squeak of sneakers skidding on exposed concrete to an empty doorway. The room beyond has two other doors, and one man inside, trapped in the choice between them. A pale shirt catches what little light there is. The shape and the height might be dimly familiar, but again, Jack would need to be thinking for that to happen. Instead he reads the colour in the broadest, clearest terms. White for a coward. White for a killer who ran when it all went wrong.

Noiseless but for his racing heart, Jack edges to a corner on the hallway, and along to the next entrance. There he folds in next to the frame, and with the toe of his shoe scatters the debris on the floor. The slightest gravel hiss, barely a noise at all, it's not meant to attract conscious attention. It's a tiny cue to the guy inside; when you're lost and desperate you'll jump on any suggestion. It's rare you'll take the time to question where it comes from.

It works too, or seems to – there's barely a second between the stony shift and the next running step. White-Shirt comes barrelling out, and straight into Jack's waiting elbow. It gets him hard in the ribs, sends him staggering back, almost to one knee before he recovers. When he straightens by the window, Jack sees his shirt isn't all that's white.

"Guess Dylan was right about clowns."

The coward tries to ignore him. He rolls up off the floor with one arm folded across his chest. The other is outstretched, pointing past Jack. Maybe the exaggerated mouth moves, trying to explain, but there's no sound. Ignored, getting nothing but glaring hate from Jack, he tries to get by, almost starting to run again. It doesn't take much of a shove, a flat palm in the same ribs, to send him back again.

"First question – I'm going to ask it like I don't already know, to see if you lie – what are you doing here?"

Another attempt to get past him, more noiseless pointing. Pointing at Jack and then at the ceiling, head swaying. It looks like it ought to mean something, but Jack doesn't understand. He doesn't care to.

On the clown's third attempt to get around him, Jack pulls away to his left and throws a punch. He catches his target square on the edge of the jaw and sends him sideways into the wall. Jack closes the gap between them as he crumples. "Really not a good time for the mime act. What are you doing here?" The freak staggers back to his feet without even attempting an answer. One hand reaches for the doorframe, maybe just to pull himself up, but Jack bats it away again. "Starting to get angry, man; you need to start talking."

The clown rolls, his back to the wall. Both hands are up in front of him, raised to show them empty and innocent. Other movements too – sweeping away from the chest, making a fist with the thumb stuck out, drawing it down from the mouth – but in between always resetting, always up and harmless.

That's how Jack sees the fresh burn on the pale palm. The possibility that it might have come from putting out a kindling ember on Lula doesn't cross his mind. All he sees is all the proof he needs.

White-Shirt sees what's coming and grabs out for the door again. He'd fight, if he was so innocent, wouldn't he? He'd defend himself instead of trying over and over again to run. Jack grabs him back by the collar, puts him back down where he was. His own fist gets trapped between the clown's broad back and the bricks, blood drawn, but he doesn't feel it.

There's no purpose in the second punch as there was with the first. It doesn't come from anything so cool as strategy. It comes from instinct and carries all the primal power that goes along with that. It's out of that deep place Jack's been half-sunk in all this time. The sudden match feels good, like the tumblers in a lock switching for the picks, the clack of unlocking.

There'd be a third punch, except that he's mainly been using his right arm. The burn on the left hasn't sealed the way it should, still stretches tender if he does too much with it. His left arm has been mostly hanging.

Too late, Jack sees the clown's eyes lift up, over his shoulder, and too late he feels the presence there.

His left arm is dragged out straight to the side, keeping him low. A knee braces his elbow against the edge of the door, a hand still pulling back on his wrist so he feels the bone bend in the flesh and stops struggling. He can turn his head only just enough to see there's one more thing Dylan was right about; they travel in pairs.

The second clown darts its head down, pointed features like a rat, and he sees it much closer up. "I'm the violent one," it mutters. "It's not a gag or ironic or meant to be funny because I'm little and he ain't, it's just facts. So are you going to simmer down or do I just go ahead and break your arm?"

"No way you're strong en-" But Jack has to break off yelling. The pressure lets up enough for him to relent, "Okay, fine, just stop."

He's a little surprised, in fact, that it stops so quickly. Surrender is accepted at the first word. By the time Jack finishes his sentence, the second clown has stepped over him and fallen to the first. It wants to inspect his bruises, but the hands are still up, flashing in between them.

Now that there's pain and Jack has to sit still for a second, now that somebody has cleared his head, he knows what all the twitching fingers must be.

"Petey, slow down, you're not… _Not us_ , what wasn't us?... No, no, I won't leave you alone anymore, not ever… _Not us_ , yeah, I heard you, but… I _am_ telling him, Petey, but – Hey, Wilder, something wasn't us, okay?"

Jack feels it coming on like a migraine, that black-hole sensation of everything you knew evaporating. 'Mistake'. That's what gets stuck in his head, one word, 'mistake'.

Between more desperate signing, Petey keeps pointing out the door, scrabbling towards it. The little one keeps pulling him back to centre. There's no settling him, though; every dead moment he's still snatching words out of the air. All the effort of trying to communicate, there are noises in his throat, he just can't shape them. Trying to coax sense out of him, " _Who_ , big guy?" and you can hear the partner's frustration, needing him calm. It turns briefly to Jack, "He doesn't like confrontation, it panics him. You're an idiot, by the way; what'd you think, if you hit him enough he'd learn to talk?"

"I… I didn't-"

"Care?" There'd be more of that accusation, except that a big hand grabs at its sleeve, "What is it, Petey?... Yeah, I know, but _who_ , who got away?"

It wasn't them, and someone got away; Jack arrives at what should have been a very obvious version of events, just as the second clown pieces them together. His breath goes away from him. When it rolls its eyes back to him, he can't help but nod being told, "You are such a goon." But on the next breath, Jack is forgotten. "Okay, big fella, you have to get calm, and _now_. You have to tell me all what you saw clear as you can, okay?"

The hands are still flustered, still shaking, trying to explain. But the partner is watching close, seems to be making some sense from it. Maybe they can help. Jack's not sure why they _would_ but that's the way things seem to be going. He holds his tongue and tries to get to his feet. A few more prodding questions, the odd mutter of comfort, maybe they're getting somewhere.

A torchlight cuts through the doorway, throwing Jack's shadow to the other wall. He darts inside and glances back out.

Another sweeping light. The crackle of radios.

Police.

By the time he looks back, the second clown is pulling the first one up from the wall. "On your feet, soldier," it says. "No rest for the hilarious." It gives him its baseball cap to hide the scrape on his temple where he collided with the wall, its outsized hoodie to cover the grubby white shirt. Before Jack knows it they're in front of him, side by side, filling the doorway.

He stays put, too lost in the last five minutes to understand.

A second later, they both turn staring. A second more and the little one balks, "You can stand there and get arrested if you want to. I, for one, will totally testify on the assault I witnessed just before."

Five minutes more. Five minutes more and Jack might have had something worth taking back with him, something useful.

Another sign, thumb and forefinger picking something out of the air in amongst it. The translation comes, "He says we'll find you. If I was him I don't know if I'd be so generous."

The radios again, closer now, and two lights together, crossing each other. "Go," the little one hisses. It lets Jack get as far as the door he came in at before it calls him back. "Hey, Wilder? You ain't my favourite no more."

[[A/N - I'm under the meanest flu I've had in years at the mo, folks. Will do my absolute best to stick to the posting schedule but forgive me if I should be a day out here and there these next couple weeks...]]


	24. Chapter 24

The technique known to crooked law enforcement officials of all moral alignments as 'the Puzo' is designed to push evidence to the front of the line for analysis. Predictably enough, being named after the author of _The Godfather,_ this is accomplished by somehow connecting the item in question to a Mafia-linked investigation. Dasko's phone was collected from Rome, so Alma didn't have too tough a time applying the principle; with the possible exception of Las Vegas, Italy is possibly the only place in the world where a Puzo is more effective than in New York City.

Maybe this seems like an inappropriate time to discuss the vagaries of getting things done surreptitiously within a large bureaucratic organization. Maybe you think Dylan ought to have other things on his mind.

But the truth is, the email appeared just when he needed it. Specifically, he needed something. More specific still, he needed anything, anything he can go on, anything to lend some logic to this night.

And as for time, time is the one thing he's got in spades right now.

From Dylan's vantage point on the balcony, it looked as if things couldn't have gone better. The first he knew of any real danger was when Lula wouldn't take her microphone back. Even that might have been understandable; she'd done the drop before and worked with the fire and screens, but never all together. She might easily have been overwhelmed. Dylan wasn't even going to mention it.

Then Jack dropped his comms and took off, all Merritt and Danny can tell him is that something must have gone wrong in the fire trap and without her microphone, there's no story yet from the only person who could possibly tell it. The world can't turn until he sees them again. Dylan's got nothing _but_ time.

Time, and Alma's message. It's a pity, though, that he knows more about the effects of the Puzo as a move and less about the works of the man they're named for. He might, if he were more familiar with those novels, not be so hopeful. He might not have gone looking for a spark of useful knowing in what is traditionally so bleak, tragic and corrupt. But it isn't long before he realizes what he's into. The passcode is the first thing the tech analysts figured out and from that, he knows there's no comfort to be found here.

The four digits are 3665. And before you yell foul and start screaming those digits have nothing to do with Danny like Rebecca said they did, look at your phone keypad. Look at a nearby calculator. Anything with the numbers one to nine arranged in a square and the letters of the alphabet assigned to them, look at that. Now, there are a few words you might be dialling when you dial 3665, but the one Alma thought was most likely, and Dylan is inclined to agree, is 'fool'.

Rebecca only had seven contacts; Nita, Ian, Carly, Elliott, Tom, Royston and Yvonne.

Or, all lined up down a page and you just read the first letters, 'Nice Try'.

There were no messages. No outgoing calls. The lab found the phone notable only in its being so blank. It was their considered opinion that it was probably one of a stable of phones kept around, looking normal, looking basic, until such times as an unknown phone is needed for a piece of work. They recommend bugging it and returning it to from whence it came, which if you really are investigating the Mafia is impractical but plausible, and if you really needed something solid to tell your team tonight is no use at all.

The email, though it came from a generic and temporary address made up of random, jumbled letters, is signed off, _Désolé, chéri._

In light of this, maybe he was right the first time; all he's got is time.

Then come slow footsteps on the stairs outside. Dylan is on his feet in a second, slipping up to the door. He listens for radio crackle and the conversational code words that would mean whoever is coming thinks they were followed. All he hears instead is Merritt mumbling, and Lula softly crying. The two of them arriving together means they used an escape plan designed to give her someone to lean on if she twisted her ankle on the drop. It sounds like a lot more went on than a simple sprain, but at least the plan was in place. A sprain would be great right now. She could limp for a day or two, whine, demand service and attention. No one would complain. Dylan would turn her foot himself, if all the rest could be undone and stop her crying.

The second they reach the door he pulls them both inside and takes Lula from under Merritt's sheltering arm. She freezes, won't let herself be guided anymore. Dylan holds her at arm's length and sees the fight rising up inside. She can't quite lift her eyes yet, but her chin is up and her back is straightening.

With a glance he asks Merritt what happened, and gets only a shrug. "And Danny?"

Lula answers, "He went to get Jack." A slow, considered way of speaking; she is arranging her thoughts behind each word, clicking together like puzzle pieces. There is no flow. As strange as it is to hear from her, it's plain she finds it stranger still to struggle. "Backstage. Downstairs. It's where Jack went and where we were so sure the cops would go first. Danny went to… help. I think…"

If you weren't paying attention you'd miss a slight slump in her core. Merritt catches it and on the next breath steps forward to catch Lula. "I'm fine," she insists, breathless. "I'm okay."

"Like hell," and Dylan takes hold of her, one hand in hers and the other at her waist, walking her gently to the stairs.

Her hair hangs in her face. The first thing he notices in pushing it back is the wave of smoke stench that comes off it. The second is a lock that runs harder and heavier over his palm than the rest, which won't stay back but has weight enough of its own to slip forward over her shoulder again. It is frazzled, ratted plastic. He could twist it and it would snap off. Burnt. So, though she tells him everything and with admirable cogency, he knows the worst of it before she even speaks.

The rest and all the details are told by the time he places her gently on the edge of the bed. She strives when he eases her sideways, as if the pillow repels her. As gently as he can explain it, "You can stop arguing with yourself now; just go on ahead and pass out. Don't make me send McKinney up here."

He stays until she realizes what he's waiting for, and at least pretends to shut her eyes.

It's not too late. Dylan keeps telling himself that as he goes back downstairs. It could have been, and it very nearly was, but it's not too late. It would be easy to let the fact that they got came so close to losing one of their own put him off, to let that tell him they're done. Too many mistakes have been made, too many chances taken, too many plans backfired. There is too much they don't know and too many factors acting against them. It would be easy to give in and for it all to be too late. But it's not. It's not too late.

Besides, even if it were, there's only one thing to do when you're halfway through hell, and it isn't turning back.

It's not too late, and he's struggling to find some way to tell that to Merritt so he'll believe it. It's just that Merritt's on the couch, his head in his hands. That makes it a little difficult to be reassuring, since it's exactly what Dylan would like to be doing himself.

He hesitates long enough that Merritt spares him the trying. "Just tell me what we do now."

"Well, the good news is there's one easy and immediate step for us to take. Bad news is, we can't move Lula and we can't leave her alone and everything within a mile is going to be crawling with cops for at least twenty-four hours, so essentially we can't do much more than sit here and look at each other."

With a little nod, as if this is no more or less than might have been expected, "Oh. Just out of interest, what was that immediate and easy step that might as well be a step onto a landmine?"

A single knock at the door halts Dylan's ready answer. Not so much as a breath passes between them until it is followed on by a double-knock, and another single to finish. Getting up to let Danny in, "We have to find your biggest fan again."

" _Former_ biggest fan." Merritt's got more to add there, might even be able to lift the mood somewhat, except that when the door opens Danny pushes in from the landing alone. Merritt's on his feet in a second, "Where's Jack? You were going to stay and find Jack. You were the one who said this, and yet –"

"Enough," Dylan tells him. But when he turns around to Danny again all he can find to say is, "Where's Jack?"

"Gone, I think, before I got there." His eyes are everywhere, and when they find nothing he charges inside to take in all the corners he couldn't see before. "Lula, did she…?"

Merritt tells him. "Upstairs. She's f…" but he flounders over 'fine' and says no more.

"Well, is she awake?"

"Not officially," and Dylan puts himself at the bottom of the stairwell. Not only does it keep Danny down here but it moves him a step back towards the couch, a step back to what they asked him in the first place.

"I couldn't get back inside, too many police. Just had to pull back and watch to see who came out."

That can only be a good thing. If Danny waited and watched and has decided to come back now, that can only be a good thing. But given the continued absence of one of his horsemen he feels the need to check. "No arrests, I assume?"

"Two. But no one we know – a big guy in white, kept his hood up and a little… _girl_ , I think, American, kept yelling 'Hack the planet', don't ask me why…"

How like this night, to give Dylan a second where it seemed like something might have worked out alright, and take it away. His eyes shut but he _feels_ Merritt's brow lift; "Found 'em. Well, that's the easy and immediate step taken care of, now to move on to the tougher, more involved step – who gets to dress up as the lawyer and go bail them out?"

Eyes still shut, pinching the bridge of his nose, "It'll have to be me; your voice is too well known and his Italian's lousy, so-"

"I was _kidding_."

"I'm not. But we have to move now or the real _avvocato_ 'll beat me to-"

His phone ringing beats him to the end of the sentence. Too fast, sloppy, he answers without looking. Sometimes hope is supposed to be enough, there's supposed to be only one person who might be calling. "Jack-"

"No." Alma. "Is everything alright?"

"Not in the slightest. Hang on a second."

Merritt and Danny aren't overly happy when Dylan excuses himself. That's a very mild way of putting it. It's quite a kind way too, glossing over as it does some of the irrational emotional peaks and the profanity used to express them. Dylan closes himself behind the nearest door just to get away. By misfortune or divine punishment, this leaves him in the dim little side room where Lula has been hemming, buttoning and tearing all week. He leans against a table and a sequin bites his hand. He lets it.

Despite all of this effort made so that he can talk to her, he tells Alma, "I can't really talk right now."

"I understand. Did you get what I sent you?"

"Yes. Though part of the whole thing with secret communications is that you don't call to check if I got them or not."

"But there's more. I only just found out. Your _Puzo_ worked too well; they think I'm investigating Rebecca Dasko personally. They called me. I thought you ought to know, you're not in any danger." Dylan bites back his laughter. First and foremost, it would be cruel to Alma. Second, he'd rather leave her believing that he is somehow safe. Last and maybe most important and he just barely admits it to himself, he's scared of what that laugh might sound like. "How's that?"

"Because she isn't in Rome. She took a flight to Monte Carlo this afternoon."

"Monte Carlo?" he repeats, but before any confusion can really take hold there's a noise at the door. It's not loud or distinct, but it's human. It might, in fact, be the fingernails of a hand pressed flat on the wood turning suddenly and convulsively into a fist, might be followed up with the slightest tap, that fist wanting to come down hard on something but not wanting to give itself away. Or Dylan could be hearing things. He could be overreacting. Still, as soft as he can make a hang-up sound, "I'll call you back," and he cuts the line.

More than anything, he's curious as he returns to the main room. Eavesdropping doesn't make him quite so angry as it once might have; he's learned to differentiate between the kind that denotes trust issues and the slightly healthier kind that comes with a group of occasionally-scruple-compromised people trying to keep up with other. He finds the main room empty, follows the sounds of a discussion about to turn heated to another of the bedrooms. Merritt is standing by the door, and his curiosity is level with Dylan's, though a little more vehemently expressed.

"What did he overhear?" he mumbles, mock-mild, when Dylan edges up next to him.

Danny is oblivious. He's packing. Something about Monte Carlo and Danny is throwing things carelessly into the backpack he arrived with, jacket tucked under one arm and slipping, stretching for things that are out of reach. Panic is nothing new, but for something to strike so deep it affects his spatial awareness, well, professionally that could be very worrying. Dylan sends Merritt away with a nod. Or he tries to, at least, and gets ignored. His second gambit is more effective. "Go check on Lula. If she's still conscious, fix that."

Danny counts him step by step out of earshot. Then, without ever turning or stopping cramming the bag, "It's Henley. It's always been Henley. It was the first thing Rebecca said to me, she mentioned her to Lula and to Merritt, I can't believe I let it go by, it's so stupid-"

"Hey, calm down." No reaction. Getting a little sick of being ignored now, Dylan grabs that reaching arm the next time it tries to grab something six feet away and turns Danny round. "Henley's in Atlantic City. Now, I can't tell you how, but we'll know if Dasko makes a move back to the States, so-"

Danny yanks his arm free and goes right back to what he was doing before.

"Danny? Danny, Henley's in Atlantic City. Isn't she? Henley wouldn't have come all the way to Europe and you not say a word about it, right?" Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It ought to be answer enough, but this has been a night full of nothing and, by now _very_ sick indeed of being ignored, Dylan insists on an answer. Through gritted teeth, "Danny?"

A beat of a pause, no pause at all, Danny's packing stills just about long enough for one deep breath. "I'm sorry."


	25. Chapter 25

"I'm sorry," Quinn mutters, fluttering around Petey with a cloth and antiseptic. The police only wiped off blood and make-up. Dirt, infection, that didn't feature. Quinn's got him sitting on the edge of the hotel tub so it can work three-sixty around him, treat the graze on his lower back, the ragged tear where his elbow met concrete too hard. "I shouldn't have left you there anyway. You ought to keep me on a leash, you know that? I'm the worst pal in the world and that was even before I got us arrested. But you wait, I'll make it up to you; I'm gonna flat-out _kill_ Wilder when I get a hold of him."

A big hand reaches back and pulls it forward by the hood so that it can see his hands. _Not his fault_.

" _Yes_ his fault. He can jump to all the conclusions he wants, I don't care. What I'm going to skin him for is how he dealt with it."

 _You'd do the same_.

"Oh, I would. And, like I said, I'm gonna. Now release me, I'm not done back here." He opens his fist and Quinn falls away into the bath again. It goes back to work, taping white cotton over the deepest of the cut. "Y'know, after this, I am all for writing off the next twenty-four hours, what do you say? We'll find some little pizzeria that don't close and sit on the sidewalk with a slice and a tub of ice cream 'til the sun comes up, and-"

And just when it was all starting to sound so good, just when they might have let go of this endlessly aggravating night, might have found their usual selves again, the sharp trill of a phone shatters it all. So loud and sudden, echoing on the tiles, they both seize, Quinn yelping. And after the initial shock, the real fear sets in. Quinn scrambles out of the bath, grabs the phone from the windowsill. It stares at the screen until the flash of Petey's hands distracts it.

 _Mom or Dad?_

"Dad." Petey crosses himself. "Shit, what do I say? Why are we even in Rome?"

Pointing at Quinn, then tapping his temple, _You thought_.

"Funny. Funny, how you wouldn't even put your mitts up to defend yourself with Wilder and you'll go right ahead and stab me in the heart like that." It sits down next to him. When an arm drapes around its shoulders it tugs it tighter. Then, with a sigh, it answers the call. Bright and grinning, "Hey, Pops!"

" _Don't 'hey, Pops' me, Arlechinno_!" The bellowing is so bass and powerful Quinn's arm shoots out straight, holding the phone away. "Where are you two…" Through gritted teeth, fighting harsher and more heartfelt epithets, "… _rascals_?"

"We're at the hotel," Quinn tries, though Petey is telling it, _No_ and _No lies!,_ every desperate way he knows how. "Just like last time we spoke. Kind of a long night, so we turned in, so-"

"The Commedia just bailed you out of a jail cell in Rome. Your mother has taken to his bed with the grief of it all. Face turned the same colour as his make-up…"

With two fingers, Petey taps his watch, then draws the same two fingers across his throat. _This time he's going to kill us_.

Quinn stands. It paces to the window and, by the time it comes pacing back, it's had an idea. Maybe not a very good one, but the only one, and they're already in too much trouble. Sometimes you're so far down a hole it's better to keep digging. Standing at the mirror, it makes its expression painfully blank, Barbie-vacuous, hoping its shaking voice will follow. "But… Panty, we followed the Horsemen. Weren't we supposed to? I thought we were sticking with them? Y'know, in case Shrike changes his mind, he's got to be able to find us, don't he?"

The line turns quiet. Not the safe kind of quiet, but at least not the scary kind either. It goes quiet because Panty puts the phone down for a moment, walks away from it and curses them both blind for almost a straight minute, a spectacularly creative stream of profanity in at least three languages that Quinn recognizes, another couple that Petey seems to pick up. Their attention, however, stays mainly in their little bathroom, on the hands between them, the secret conversation under the dangerous one.

 _Who do you love?_

 _Hasn't worked yet._

 _Will work, wait and see._ _Clever Quinn_.

 _Quinn counts chickens_.

 _Seven chickens_.

This last is signed just to make him laugh. He hasn't, not really. He managed what was required of him when they were distracting the police, made himself enough of a grinning pest to make sure two pairs of cuffs were wasted, but that was work. It's never supposed to be work. Quinn just needs to get the fire started again, that's all.

Just the twitch of a smile, the beginning of hope, before Panty comes back to the phone _blasting_. " _Dylan Shrike's invitation no longer stands!_ Is that clear enough or should I break it down a little more?"

"Nope," Quinn gabbles fast. "No need, real clear, crystal, glacial, ice cool clarity there, boss, we fully understand and apologize most heartily for the prior misunderstanding, although you have to sort of admit it worked out, sure thing Lula May's not complaining – "

" _Stop!_ " It's not the first time Quinn has thought to itself, maybe Panty was in the army at some earlier stage in his life. Certainly it finds itself snapping to attention every time he yells. "What about May?"

"Well, you know they performed here tonight, right?" A growl, barely human, "Okay-okay-stupid-question, you knew before they did, okay. But something went wrong with one of the tricks. May nearly got barbecued, and I do mean full-tilt Cajun-style, Pops. Petey saved her life. Nearly got the guy who did it too, only Wilder saw Petey first. Idiot put two and two together and came up with zero."

Now comes the first silence that speaks of real danger, of having undone some of the work that had seemed to go so well. Quinn winces. But the voice comes back with surprising gravity, "And what did Petey see?"

"…Wilder's knuckles, mostly. He says the other guy was too far ahead and it was too dark. Why? Should we be worried?"

" _No, you should be in Paris_!" and the ferocity roars forth again, startling Quinn so it drops the phone clattering to the tiles and scrabbles to pick it up. It stays on the floor, cross-legged at Petey's feet so they can both hear. It's not so easy now; the yelling stops. Panty is – and it pains Quinn to even think this, since it couldn't possibly be true and it'll inevitably look stupid for entertaining the notion – something like _civil_. There's a tremor, when he tells them that since they are in Rome anyway they might as well stay there, just one angry red quiver in his voice, but after that he seems to have run out of steam. He even asks how Petey is, and with something like Doc's compassion tells Quinn to take care of him.

It can't think how to say 'all bark no bite' by signing. Instead it opts for the universal mime, the hand making a beak like inside a puppet's head, opening and closing, _Blah-blah-blah_. But Petey doesn't trust it. It's all over his face and in the slouch of his shoulders. Trouble is there's too much on his mind altogether tonight; he still thinks he should have caught the would-be killer, he's still dizzy from clunking his head against the wall, he's still thinking about Wilder. It all adds up. The more-belligerent of their parents could be sending them first class tickets to the Caribbean and Petey couldn't trust it right now.

So when Quinn hangs up (after another violent blast telling them to stay put), it does so with its very best energy. It hops to its feet, "Cheer up, we're off the hook! Come on, who loves you, baby? Who takes care of you?" Petey tries. Not very hard, but it's all the effort he's got to give, so Quinn lets it slide. Jogging his shoulder, "Who's taking you for pizza? C'mon. But you gotta fix your face first, man, I can't be seen with you like this. You look like a _normal_ person."

* * *

Jack's only had one message all night. One, and that from Dylan. It checked with one word that he was safe and was answered with one word 'yes' – monosyllables, both acknowledging that there was far too much that needed said to even attempt in text-silence and without each other's giveaway faces to lend clarity to double-meanings and cruel kindness. One word for one message, and Jack would be glad that it was just that one easy prelude before all the inevitable yelling, except that it's only one. It's only one, and the _wrong_ one. He's waiting for another.

He's waiting for it to come out of nowhere; his chances would be vastly improved if he'd sent Lula something she could reply to. Don't think he doesn't realize that. These hours – skulking along in shadows, avoiding crowds, waiting out the police in the piazza – have been long. There's been a lot of time to think, not helped by the fact that the first place he chose to hide out was the old church he's been trapped in half the week. There's something about statues of saints, it doesn't matter how poorly painted the eyes might be, they can still glare at you. They can smile too, depending on what you deserve but only very rarely has Jack ever given a saint occasion to smile. Now, he thinks it was Saint Anthony who was making him feel so bad. This is for the best; consider that it was Saint Lorenzo and that Lorenzo was _burned alive_ in his martyrdom and, on Jack's behalf, be thankful he thinks it was Saint Anthony.

If he could have called, it would have been different. He'd have known what to say if he could have heard her voice. His phone was in his hand, too, to hell with the rules, however logical they might be, however _stupid_ it might be to communicate any more than strictly necessary when really they ought to be running by now, he was going to do it.

Then the reason he shouldn't be calling anybody happened, right in that moment. The bell that kept nailing him down here this week gave him his only warning – the priest had come in at his sneak side door, leading the police. Jack made it out with a second in hand. They even heard the other door shut behind him and came chasing, but the time was enough to disappear. Just.

So he hasn't called. And there could have been a message, who would know, but… But he _tried_. Ten times or more, he tried. There just weren't any words he could squeeze down small enough to send and them not look like a joke.

So he's waited – for a message or the coast to clear, whichever came first.

Now, in as near as he can find to silence, he opens the door to the borrowed apartment. Breath held, the knot in his stomach, because this time is different to usual. This isn't just 'blame the kid'; whatever he gets, for taking off and blowing the exit plan and coming up with nothing anyway, he deserves.

But there's no one. The place is in darkness. There's no yelling, no panic, except in Jack's chest when he wonders for a second if they left like they were supposed to, if they're gone – worse, if something happened to Lula they couldn't deal with themselves. Then he adjusts to the quiet and knows better. There are still people here, though maybe not everyone. There's heat, muttering, somewhere back in one of the half-dozen bedrooms. And up above on the mezzanine there's ragged breathing pretending to be asleep.

Lula barely sleeps on a good night; she's got a mind that flutters like a dove from one thing to another, keeps her up to dawn sometimes. Short of heavy medication, there's no way she's sleeping now. Jack's certain they tried everything and they know she needs to go under, just as he's certain none of it worked, that she pretended to make them stop trying.

He climbs up there and finds her with her face to the wall, lying too straight and stiff on top of the sheets. She sleeps, when she sleeps, flung out like a starfish.

He sits on the edge, his back towards hers. His hand edges, slowly at first, out over the covers, back towards hers. It never gets a chance to go any faster. "No." Her voice shakes. It's not tearful now but is damp and stuffy with the hangover from earlier. Lula has all the simple strength of a kid who has been yelled at unfairly and knows it was unfair, "I don't want you."

Her name is at his lips. Her name and, all of a sudden, all the other words that have evaded him all night, all lined up, ready to fall. His hand is still reaching, creeps another inch or so. She's still shaking; how is he supposed to walk away? The urge to ignore her is incredible, consuming. It's so powerful Jack could almost convince himself that she's lying, maybe doesn't really know what she wants, maybe ignoring her is the best thing to do, maybe that's what she wants. But he can't tell how much of that really comes from Lula and what she said, and how much of it comes from his own need, his own stung pride.

He turns a little. She flinches when he strokes her hair. Then Jack gets up and leaves her there.

Here's another lesson they teach you in cold Sunday buildings with judgemental statues: you get what you deserve. Here's one you learn when you get comfortable enough to stop lurching from day to day and lunch to lunch: if you just keep taking what you want, it catches up to you. You should only ever have what you've earned.

Not wishing to get any closer to the hushed argument back in the bedrooms, not ready to be discovered just yet and face the rest of his winnings for the evening, Jack's got nowhere to go. He settles on the couch. There might have been a view out over the balcony, might have been city lights, but the drapes are drawn, hiding the lights inside. He hasn't the energy to get up and slip out between them. He sits and, with easy familiarity, goes back to waiting. Waiting, this time, for what he deserves, and not a message he's done nothing to earn.

It must be that his thoughts drift. Maybe he stops thinking at all, or brushes up against sleep. There must be something of that kind, because the very next thing he's aware of is the weight of Lula's head coming down on his shoulder. No step, no sign of her coming, just the warm hair pillowing against his neck, her body curling into the curve of his, both hands wrapping around his arm, he makes sure he isn't dreaming before he'll even let himself look down at her.

"I was wrong." That same simplicity as before, and no softer, no warmer. "I do want you. I wanted you tonight, though, too…"

"I thought… Actually, no, I didn't, but I knew… I mean, somebody tried to… I wanted the-"

"I know how all those sentences end," she nods. The hands around his arm pick it up and wrap it around her shoulders. "But you were wrong. And I'd like to fight about it, a big fight, with yelling. I'm good at yelling. Don't tell, because it's a secret, but sometimes I really enjoy yelling. But I need to be mad and… I don't know how to be mad at you."

He edges her a little closer, tightening his arm so her head tips close and he can kiss the top of it. "That's the shock talking. Give it time. You'll be boiling over before you know it." Somewhere down in the dark he feels the weak beginning of a smile, so, though this next part is true and he really doesn't want to think about it, he goes on, "Wait until Dylan finds me. There'll be a bandwagon to jump on. Everybody can be mad at me at once."

She mumbles something about Dylan not being here. But maybe she just means in this room; it definitely couldn't be anything serious, because she trails away. Distracted, it turns out, by Jack's hanging hand. She's seen something that stops her, and tips it to what little light edges around the drapes. With a barely glancing fingertip, she explores the greasepaint-stained grazes on his knuckles. He's about to tell her not to worry when she asks, "Is that white make-up? Jack, you _didn't_? Jack, no-"

"No," he says quickly, pulling her back in tight, though there's a little panic pounding under her skin now, "No. Well, yes, but it was a mistake. And before you get mad, because I know your heart's not in it, I already know it was a mistake. And the other clown already yelled at me for it. And, also, damn near broke my arm. It's kind of a weird story, I can tell you in the morning, but is that okay? Will that do? I already got this from… from the short one. _What_ is that, by the way?"

"Could you have come up with a less sensitive way to put that?"

"…Means you don't know."

He holds her there, her head on his chest, feeling the racing pulse subside. It goes out of her voice too, the harsh edges dropping into mumbles like bubbles from deep underwater. Fading. "I thought female, Dylan thought male, Merritt said it didn't stand still long enough for him to form an opinion. Care to tip the scales?"

"…What one was your opinion again?"

Delayed by the guttering three-tiered in-breath of a yawn, "Girl."

"Definitely a girl. Now go to sleep, okay?"

* * *

AN to my dear guest - firstly thank you. Secondly, whoever paid for a jet on a tilting mech in a container drifting apparently shipless down the Thames. I've always assumed the Eye have been thieving for centuries? Thirdly, it's not anywhere in this tale so far, but I do love Dylan and it's a great scene so who can say? I used to one-shot a lot, I may again.


	26. Chapter 26

"Hey," and a rough hand grabs Jack's shoulder. After the unexpected dream right before he fell asleep, it makes immediate, thoughtless sense that he should wake into the nightmare he always anticipated. The hand that lifts him into the world also holds him back against the couch, so he can't move when his eyes open and find Dylan's burning down on him. Maybe it's to keep him from escaping, maybe it's the beginnings of the inevitable torture. Then comes the explanation, a soft hiss, "Careful. I left this as late as I could because I didn't want to wake the lady." Jack glances down and finds Lula exactly where he saw her last, curled like a dove with her head against his chest. Now that he's aware of her, her weight and her warmth are comforting. It hardly seems fair, when they're about to be taken away. "But since time's ticking and she shows no more sign of moving than the average mountain, you're just going to have to get up slowly."

The pinning hand pulls back, more of a challenge than a release. Jack takes his time slipping out from under Lula, cradling her head on his hand, replacing himself with a pillow as he eases her down on her side. This is more important to him than the apparent time limit. He doesn't even know what that relates to yet.

Lula's breath catches and takes Jack's with it. Her hand grabs out, blind and clutching, so he puts his where she can find it. That's enough. A few seconds and her grip eases again, lets him slide away.

If he was dumb and didn't know better than to expect approval of any kind, Jack might almost imagine that Dylan doesn't mind waiting. In fact he doesn't wait at all, but disappears through the thick drapes to the balcony. By the chill and the white light, Jack knows it's still early. But despite this, and the balcony depth, despite knowing he can't be seen from the ground, he creeps out just as careful, keeps his face turned away until he has peered over into the piazza and seen it deserted. It's ragged, littered with the debris of so many people having been moved along at once. The green curtain is still where it fell down from the stage, all of it hemmed in with crime scene tape and field lights. The one or two personnel still lingering look tired and lazy, guard dogs rather than bloodhounds. They are, however, still cops; Jack leans over his folded arms, over the balustrade, studying them. "How can we still be here?"

All Dylan offers, "It's taken care of." From anybody else it wouldn't be enough. Coming from Dylan, Jack nods. Then he waits, eyes shut, for the rest. Too late, he realizes he was expected to speak first, and by then Dylan is leaning in, pressing for a reaction, "Had a hell of time over it, though. Supposed to be gone by now. Supposed to be out of the country and where are we? Still on the other side of the street."

"Lula can't go anywhere right now." The truth, but the wrong answer; Dylan flares. Before he can start Jack straightens up, "Look, I'm sorry, I really am. But-"

"Don't ever drop comms on me again."

"– You didn't see her, not up close, if you'd s-"

"I'm not saying I don't know why you did it. But don't."

"What else was I supposed to do, go after the guy with you yelling in my ear how I blew the exit str-?"

"Jack, the only way this doesn't turn into an argument, an argument which, by the way, you _will_ lose, is if you stop arguing, alright?"

" _No_. I had to ditch the mic anyway, it would have been pointl-"

"You're not listening to me," but Jack is listening when his shoulder is grabbed again, this time a shove, this time putting his back to the balustrade and the thin air above it. The wall is too wide to fall over but the sensation is the same. His brain goes blank in the instinctual fear. So he's listening, "Don't cut me out. I mean it. I didn't know a thing until Merritt brought Lula back, and I didn't know where you were either. Don't ever pull your earpiece out again, do you understand?"

It's the second time a dressing-down has turned drastically from the expected path in a matter of hours. Jack falters, confused. Time will go on, and the conversation too, before somewhere deep down he realizes something that should have been very obvious long before now; he was right. Last night, when he first thought of stepping off stage, when he was taking Dylan out of his ear, his first thought was that Dylan would do the same if he only knew.

And he was right. He so rarely is or expects to be that it's something of a revelation today, but Dylan is not disagreeing with his course of action.

Here in the moment, yet to arrive at this conclusion, Jack is struggling to come up with the appropriate words in an argument he didn't know he was having. "I didn't know how to explain it. I mean, I didn't even know what happened, except that something did. I couldn't have told you anything, and I couldn't do it with you telling me not to, so – "

"This isn't a discussion." One of those tired thoughts, and there really ought to be more on his mind right now, but Jack really envies the way all of Dylan's sentences _end_ , and are _allowed_ to end. "Let's face it, you just caught on faster. Nobody here would have done any different. Just don't ever do it again."

All Jack hears is the validation. That accepted, he no longer knows what they're supposed to be fighting about, or maybe just doesn't want to. The shut-down is physical; he closes off from the mind outward, until he can feel it in the slightest twitches of his expression. A hateful sensation; his eyes roll and he knows he looks like the angry idiot he was, on and off, most of his life. Until this; by steps and stages, all of this – until cards, until magic, until success (such as it was), until he was recruited, until the Eye, until everything he is now. He sighs and feels like he's sighing it away. Like he ought to be better than this now. His default reactions should have changed, shouldn't they?

Trying to save it, he points back inside; "Is that it? Because I want to cut that burnt part off her hair before she wakes up."

"Too late. Merritt found her playing with it last night."

Jack shakes his head. "She'll forget if she can't see it anymore."

"Just one more second of your time." Dylan closes the distance between them at an easy pace, and between Jack and the windows so he can't slip by. Being cut out, even psychologically, so soon after requesting that never happen again doesn't seem to have bothered him. Easy-going, fluid, he comes to the wall and takes a deck of cards out of his pocket. He taps them out of their box and sets them down on stone. "Cut."

Jack's right hand balls up. The second sigh is fake, is all about shaking himself out, turning around, so that his left hand is nearest to the cards. He grabs them up square, balanced at the web of his thumb. One finger slips into the block and flips up half where two fingers can grab it and wheel it round behind. Cut, he puts the deck defiantly back where he got it.

Still unfazed, Dylan nods. He never so much as looked; he's been staring out over the city the whole time. "Good," he allows, smiling. "Now the other hand." Jack turns his face away, hoping the rest of his body will naturally follow, hoping he can just start walking and ignore the demand. But he goes nowhere. He never does, at times like this. When you're scared you can run as hard as you like, but you'll never go anywhere. "The one that was under Lula when I woke you and which has been in your pocket ever since."

The one that aches, which won't even tighten all the way, the one that creaks when Jack opens it out. There's still a little white caught on the dried brown edges of his raw knuckles.

Jack grabs the deck with all the same force and intention as the first time. But the slicing finger slips, catches a corner under his fingernail, and when he turns the half out to flip it behind he presses too hard, too close to the edge. He ends up pinching only the two outside cards. The rest are all around him, scattered, falling. His foot stops one from edging out between the balcony newels. Dylan catches another the breeze tries to escape with.

"I could tell you what happened," Jack mutters. For the first time, he really looks at the violent yellow bruises where his hand was caught against the wall, where it bumped more than once off bone. "I could, except that the last line is 'but it was the wrong guy'. So it's probably not a useful story."

Dylan nods agreement and adds, "And there isn't time anyway. Damn it, Jack… Right when I needed to trust you…"

"What? What are you talking about?"

"The plan has changed. It's… it's had to."

Of course it has. Jack's already said as much; Lula can't travel. Not the way they have to, paranoid, protecting themselves, ready to run or to fight at a moment's notice. Not to mention she was all but murdered last night. He'd be more worried if the plan hadn't changed. It's only something on Dylan's voice, the slight hesitation, that suggests there could be more to it. Jack feels his thoughts straining to switch up a gear, to race and start guessing, knows that's would any of the others would do. He might even make a pretty good guess, from the way they've been talking this morning. And even if he doesn't, one thing he learned from Merritt is that you don't have to nail the answer itself, you just have to get to the right question. _What do you know?_ , that might be the right question. _What_ did _you know, last night?,_ that might be closer yet. Jack might do pretty well, if he'd let himself rev up for it.

He hangs back. Grits his teeth and forces himself to wait, knowing how Dylan hates it when Jack trusts him to give a straight answer.

"It's out of our control, but Danny and I have to go. You and Merritt are going to stay here with Lula. And it really ought to be that simple. Split up for a couple of days, meet back in Paris. Probably that's even a better way to do it. And I don't want you to do anything here but rest that hand and take care of what means most to you. Ought to be… ought to be easy as that but…"

Nothing in his speech to be jealous of anymore, "God, Dylan, spit it out."

"I think they'll come for you next."

Jack looks around, but only very slowly, caught up in unpicking those few words. They have guts to spill, when you take out the stitches, implying so much more than was actually said. The words 'they' and 'next' carry a lot of weight especially, and when you go deeper you might find it disturbing to know that Dylan thinks about these things, has been thinking, maybe had thought before anything ever happened to Lula but… But this is supposition, assumption. Jack makes himself stop. It's only fair. It's only fair and, like he noticed earlier himself, there's a hell of a lot of empty space at Dylan's back, a hell of a drop beneath it.


	27. Chapter 27

When you can stretch out your arms on either side and never feel the edge of the mattress, when you can hang a leg over the side and not have your toes sweep the floor, when you lift your head as far as it will go and still can't see over the soft white mounds of the goose down comforter, that's how you know you're in a good bed. That's the sort of bed that comes, one way or another, through very hard work. Either you slave half your life away so you can afford to stay in one, or you become the very best at what you do and get it comped. In the latter case, it's a bed to take advantage of, so freely and willingly given. It's the sort of bed from which you sigh your request for a wake-up call down the line to reception, already rueful at the thought of ever getting out again.

It's the sort of bed you then _ignore_ said wake-up call in. Three times. At the fourth, starting to feel a little bad for the receptionist, the lingering sleeper rolls over and reaches, only to find the ringing stopped by the time her hand gets there.

But even yawning, she knows what that means. It means reception only try the call three times. The fourth call was different. Even as she pushes the sticky night from her eyelashes, popping her lids apart, she can see her P.A. standing over some poor attendant, glaring, and after four rings snapping, "Never mind."

Even still clinging to the last remnants of a very lovely dream about dancing on a marble floor surrounded by tropical fish, she knows he's on his way now, and knows how many seconds have passed, and knows she has lost the length of the lobby already. There's time; he doesn't like elevators. He'll say he takes the stairs to stay in shape, and if that really were the case it's working, he looks great. But she has seen the way he looks at the crates and coffins of escapology, at drop tanks and padlocked travelling cases. He doesn't like elevators. Thirteen stairs in each flight, half a circular landing between those, she stretches the crackle out of her back at her leisure, arching up from that incredible bed on her way to the edge of it. She pouts as she backs away from it to the bathroom, waving, blowing a kiss from the doorway, "I'll see you tonight."

There's time; she is just adjusting the strap of one blue leather driving glove when the knock comes at the hotel room door. "Ms Valentine?" She says nothing yet. Adjusts her other glove, checks her lipstick and, like every other morning, fusses with her hair, wrinkling her nose; _it'll have to do_. Then the knocking again, harder, and the voice lifted, "Ms Valentine? I'm sorry to bother you but you have the meeting with the set-designers at ten, and the assistant auditions beginning at midday, so-"

Now she grabs open the door. She steps aside, letting her trim if slightly out of breath junior into the room. "Please don't announce my schedule to the entire floor, Joseph." She says this mostly to give herself time to enjoy the surprise on his face at finding her awake and fully-dressed.

"I… I'm sorry, the clerk said… You didn't answer the wake-up call."

"Oh," she furrows her brow. "I suppose I was already in the shower." Another pause, giving him just enough time to stammer something like agreement before, "What's the arrangement for breakfast?"

"On the terrace, before the meeting, but you've got fifteen minutes yet."

Her very sweetest smile, getting the door again already, "If you don't mind, Joseph, I'll see you downstairs." She offers no explanation. She had to learn the expectations, the interactions, with hired organizers very quickly. Her first month in her current profession, she got through three and realized she must have been doing something wrong. Our Ms Valentine comes from a background of partnership and mutuality, work where closeness and intuitive understanding are key. That first month, what she was doing wrong was oversharing. These P.A.s aren't partners, they're staff. Say there's an event; if you offer some excuse for not attending, they won't read between the lines to see that you're tired or hate the people and would rather gouge out your own eyes. They will, instead, try to offer solutions. That's their job. It's what they're paid to do, and until she finds one with some – indeed _any_ – concept of when to clock off, she will have to remain the sort of boss that knows her own mind, that never does explain.

The second the door closes behind him she has turned on her heel, back to the bathroom, shedding her clothes as she goes, since there really is time for that shower now. And a shower with jets, no less, and a setting to gradually raise and then lower the heat of the water so that it feels like nothing so much as walking slowly through a summer storm.

This is Monte Carlo. This shower and this bed, the view from the balcony where you can't tell the sea from the sky, the terrace stretched below where she will very soon be eating the sort of blue-ribbon cuisine that would have once been beyond her wildest imagining, all of it is part of the scenery here. Almost a third of Monaco's population are millionaires; this sort of luxury is just what you get.

They can't give her hair she doesn't hate, though. That's her thought as she sits down at the dresser, tugs on a brunette corkscrew and lets it bounce. But it's no one's fault. They could send her to the greatest stylist on the planet and she'd hate whatever she came away with. She wants all the soft gleaming length back. She wasn't done with it yet. She wants wild, screaming red back, the warrior strength she used to find when she saw herself in the mirror. She wants what she can't have and will, therefore, hate anything else that is given.

There are other things she wants and can't have. Her name is one. It's not the most pressing, but it's one. Sometimes, sitting at a mirror this way, she'll check over both shoulders and listen carefully to make sure there's no one at the door and then, safe, she'll look herself in the eye and remind herself of the truth. She ought not, when she still sometimes forgets to respond to Abigail or Ms Valentine. She ought not, but it doesn't stop her.

"Don't worry," she tells herself softly. "You're still Henley Reeves." Eyes shut, she thinks, centred and meditative, Dylan did this most of his life. By comparison, this is only moments. Henley can take it.

This is why she's so careful to be appreciative of showers and beds and breakfast – she knows what she traded for them.

But life has been worse. There's _far_ worse than being so in demand that your bosses will fly you halfway around the world and promise you all four corners of it in the future if you can only recreate your past successes. Back in the States, Ms Valentine single-handedly conceived, directed, engineered and stage-managed one of the single most attended and reported magic acts of all time. She took a casino struggling to maintain standards at the high end of the market and turned it back into a global destination venue. So, ahead of the summer season, she's in Monte Carlo to attempt a second miracle. After this, there's talk of Sun City, maybe Sydney.

Life has been worse than this. She re-perfects herself and goes to breakfast. Joseph talks her through a day she already thoroughly understands, but she allows it. It's something she still doesn't quite understand, but these assistants get a little miffed if you don't let them believe you'd wither and die without them. Then come the set-designers. Like everything else in Europe they come a half hour late, and with preconceived notions and images of her last stage in Atlantic City. She lets them down very gently, before telling them what she really wants with blunt brute force. She describes it in detail and is able to demonstrate on their own three-dimensional computer models – and weren't they so very proud of those – exactly what the practical considerations are. She shows them where she needs cover, where she needs innovation, distraction, screens, trapdoors.

They should have asked her all these things before she ever landed in the country. Unimpressed, she sends them scuttling back to their drawing board with nothing.

No, wait – she lets them keep their colour scheme. They have an idea about somewhat harsh red light under various off-whites and pale pastels that might disguise a stage hand quite admirably, it's so difficult to look at. And if 'distressing minimalist' is the look Monte Carlo stages are pursuing this season, who is she to rock the boat?

In short, that meeting doesn't last half as long as the designers expected. At a loose end before the auditions, Henley drifts to the front desk and checks there hasn't been any post for her. She'd like a postcard, or maybe even a letter. A letter would be nice. There hasn't been a letter in a while, even the coded kind, the private jokes between the lines, keywords no one but she and her correspondent could understand.

She carries a postcard in her purse. She shouldn't, she knows, too dangerous, too sentimental, too silly a thing to get caught over. She'd hate herself if it all came down over a postcard. But it's a postcard, folded so often that it has begun to split in a cross at the centre, of the Eiffel Tower. It says on the back, "Fluffy and the girls like it here. French carrots must be good." She's had it months now. Feels like a lot longer. And since he knows she's in Monaco – before she ever left America she ordered a postcard of this very hotel online so he'd know – she'd love another postcard.

All she gets today are two applications too late for the auditions and a bonus cheque based on attendance at the last show she arranged.

With a coffee in hand she finds herself escaping Joseph, hiding away beneath the stage with the technical staff. Them, she gets along with better. She's got a suspicion each and every one of them knows exactly who she is, and the importance of never mentioning it. She understands them, and they her; when she tells them to rig a jam in a coffin back so she can test those wannabes who claim to have prior experience, they know exactly what she means and how to go about it. She sits on a raw wood stairwell and watches them, thinking dimly of her lead performers, "Has anyone seen Adam this morning?"

One of the hands, mimicking the lead performer's British accent, "Gone to call his mam, though, int'he?" The impression is good; it makes Henley wince just like the real thing. Good thing the kid speaks French better than his native tongue; it's the main reason he was recruited, alongside being a complete unknown with a good grounding in the basics and his own primary assistant.

Or, should she say, _assistants_. She asks, "And Evie?"

The lighting tech says she went for a swim. The rigger is positive he saw her downstairs in the guest gym not a half-hour ago.

If you can come by them, twins are a damn useful thing in this trade. You grab them when they present themselves. Even if that means you have to take a subpar illusionist with a grating voice and train him up yourself, if he comes with a pair of twins you catch firm hold and you do not let go.

Henley's coffee break comes to an abrupt end when Joseph tracks her down. It's one minute to midday he tells her, and they have to start the auditions on time, and he's been looking for her everywhere, and – this last he doesn't say but she can tell – he's a little frustrated with her continual vanishing act. She goes with him to calm him down as much as to keep the schedule.

They pass a line of hopefuls on their way to take their stage-side seats. And Henley would just love to say that they have come to her in all shapes and sizes but really they haven't. With three ballet companies and a world-famous troupe of gymnasts all in town, and all of these groups cutting the weaker performers only after arrival, she's got her pick of willowy limbs, toned abs and bored eyes.

Call it a premonition, call it psychic ability, but she can see her immediate future and it is long and very dull.

Call it nothing at all, because as they approach the front of the line, Henley sees something that ensures it will be neither; she sees a mass of hair in a carefully curated collection of blondes, a peachy southern belle skin tone, a costume, far too stage-spangled for auditions, which she's seen somewhere before. Of course, it could be second hand. It could be borrowed or bought or not even the same one she's thinking of.

Still, Henley stops staring in case her gaze is felt. Once secured away on the other side of the auditorium door, she turns to Joseph. Her voice lowered, not quite making eye contact; this is something she learned early on. It makes his face light up. "I hate to ask," she mutters, and Joseph's breath catches. She learned this from her very first assistant, in the four days they were associated; a P.A. does not feel they are doing their job, does not feel like you are using them to their fullest extent, unless you let them do the dirty work. "There's a woman we passed out there, a blonde in sapphire blue-"

"The one with the shrimp cocktail?"

White plastic fork scratching around the base of a sauce-smeared tub, reeking. "Yes. I don't want to see her. Can you do that for me?"

The lopsided half-smile that creeps onto his face is the same one Danny used to get if she needed him, if she asked him to put his weight behind a wrench or take some measurement she couldn't reach herself. Condescending, yes, but when it comes from a good place it's so much easier to take. She even feels a little guilty, when Joseph edges back around the door again and goes to see Rebecca gently out.


	28. Chapter 28

The woman she saw might not even have been Rebecca Dasko. It's an off-chance, at best. Why should anybody visit a country they couldn't point out on a map?

Maybe that's unfair. Not just because Henley's only met her twice and you have to give the benefit of the doubt, you have to assume two blessedly brief collisions in crowded rooms isn't long enough to have formed a fair opinion, but because they don't make you point out your destination on a map at the airport. In an age of online booking, you don't even need to be able to pronounce it right. And if, like so many of the other hopefuls, she came here with some other troupe only to be cut late, she might not even know _what_ country this is.

This is cruel, isn't it? It's mean and unnecessary and Henley ought to stop. She's lowering herself to petty bitchery, letting a long strange day get to her. And the woman she saw might not even have been Rebecca Dasko; it's ridiculous to let it affect her at all.

But Rebecca thinks Amsterdam is a country.

This is something Danny told her. His idea of an apology, after one particular argument which, like so many, was ended at the mention of trapdoors. Hours later, coming to find her, with the word 'sorry' forever trapped behind his lips and never to cross over, he told her instead that, despite having been there and in fact flown into Rotterdam – you'd think the existence of another city would have given something away – Rebecca was convinced Amsterdam was an entity all by itself. She is also certain that 'Dutch' means they speak German.

Doesn't Monte Carlo seem just a little off Rebecca's radar, these facts considered?

And the woman Henley saw might not even have been Rebecca Dasko. She keeps returning to this thought, word-for-word complete, that single sentence, clear and perfect and unmistakable. She keeps coming back to it, and every time it feels fresh; not sinking in. Not accepted. Not registering, the way truth will, to be filed away and stop itching, stop scratching at the door to be let in. Getting to her; it was probably delicious, but Henley can't remember what dinner was. She can't remember what she said to escape Joseph for the evening. She sits on her spacious balcony with the Mediterranean spread out beneath her, blackened by late red light, and feels nothing for it. Her toes stroke a gleaming mosaic of glass and porcelain. But there's no texture. She won't recall the pattern when she walks away.

No. No, this won't do. Whether it was or wasn't Rebecca Dasko is now irrelevant; her plush, free, hard-earned working vacation is under threat. Henley grabs up her folder – the notes, the applications, the blueprints for the show so far – and leaves the room. She'll come back when she can properly appreciate it.

Besides, there are worse ways to spend an evening working. Her route down to the prop store takes her right past the service entrance to the kitchen; this is something she discovered on her very first day here. In a matter of seven steps, less than three seconds, she can make a careful wrong turn through that door and leave unseen with a plate from the dessert cart. There's the smallest of thrills in it, less from stealing and more because the necessary speed means she never knows quite what she's getting. She can't even check until she's out and around the corner.

Tonight she's come into possession of some sort of open tart, layers of fruit under fine, sharp glaze. There are, absolutely, worse ways to spend an evening.

She juggles the plate and the folder with her keys, undoing all four locks on the prop store door. She had three of them installed before she'd agree to have the equipment unloaded. These rigs are her living, after all. That, and it meant she could sneak in her secret twin assistant safely. One was out front with her magician, making a grand performance of arriving, and Henley was bringing the other up the staff stairwell.

It's not the first time she's had to stifle a laugh, thinking of that story. Not the first time she's wished she had someone to tell it to.

Locking the door behind her again, she spreads out her work on top of one of the huge steel cases, seating herself on a smaller one that has the swords inside. She makes coffee – an advantage to half the crew being English, there's always a kettle around. "We're not leaving," she says aloud, to settle herself, "until we've figured out how to get both Evies on stage for the teleportations."

This is better. By the soft light of the neons in the dunk tank, she plots every step of a ninety minute performance, positions to the inch, Henley conceals and engineers and manipulates. Light and darkness are nothing more than colours to paint with. Physics stops being a limitation, turns into a challenge. This is the work. When the decision was made to hide her, she is glad this is the life they chose to hide her in. She's _grateful_.

It's a terrible thought to have, it knots up her stomach, but Henley doesn't know if she could have kept the faith quite so wholeheartedly, if she hadn't been given this.

But tonight she only gets an hour. Just as she's beginning to vanish into it, become fully absorbed, a soft step makes the stage above her head creak. Henley glances up and sighs; they'll have to have a new nail put in that before rehearsals-proper begin. Then she stands and goes to boil the kettle again.

By the time the creeping feet turn onto the backstage stairs, she is waiting with a second cup wiped hastily clean. She ducks her head to look up to the landing above, "Coffee or tea?"

"Tea, if it's all the same."

Rebecca is still overdressed. It's not quite so obvious as it was in her true-blue sequin swimwear, but there is just a little too much of everything. Too much black liner, too much red lipstick, too much cleavage, too much thigh, too much heel. Henley can't decide if she's missing something, some deliberate intent, or if this is just painful. "I have to admit," she says mildly, "I half-expected you to spring out of the snake-basket or something like it."

"Oh, _Lord_ no..." Rebecca teeters down the last of the stairs and doesn't waste a second stealing Henley's place on the sword case. "I don't contort for anybody anymore."

 _Don't exercise either_ , but Henley stops herself on the very point of –

"Go on. Say it. You'll feel incredible." Henley freezes. "Something like _So I see_ or _Yeah, it shows_. Just because it's nasty doesn't mean it's not funny. Say it or it'll just about kill you."

"I…" Henley stammers. "No, I wasn't thinking..." She clears her throat. "It's a little strange, is all. Didn't I see you in the audition line this afternoon?"

A terrible smile, "Didn't you have me removed from it?" Then, shrugging off the poison honesty, "Yes, I was there. But really I just wanted to see you. The lapdog's cute, by the way; where do I get one of those?"

"Community college media courses. But go back; what do you mean you wanted to see me?"

"Come on; aren't you Abby Valentine? Aren't you the biggest producer in stage magic worldwide?" The slightest flicker of hope; what Henley wouldn't give for an _ordinary_ psychotic wannabe right now. Just a regular obsessive who wants the job. Hell, Henley will take the crazy up to the stage and audition her right now, if that really is all she wants. But then she turns, to carry the tea back to the makeshift table. Those eyes are on her, flashing back the neon that lights the shark-like teeth below in glowing blue, grinning until they part on a giggle.

Henley sets the tea down. As she does, the plate, her half-eaten pie, shoots past it, the edge caught squealing between gold acrylic nails. Three inches long and filed to points; she can't be serious, can she?

"Sorry, couldn't resist. I hope you didn't pick that name yourself, by the way. It's horrible. The hair's not great either. Doesn't suit you. No offence. Really, I just wanted five minutes of your time. _Tried_ to explain that to Lapdog-"

"His name is Joseph."

"Like you care. Anyway, he wouldn't listen. _Insisted_ on making a scene."

"As I heard it, _you_ were the one who made it a scene."

Henley _literally_ heard it; closed inside the auditorium, listening to the screaming, she took consolation only in the knowledge that Joseph was having the time of his life when he called over hotel security. But Rebecca shrugs, forces on another grin; this one isn't cruel, something more like a blush, like bashful pride, "I couldn't not. Let an opportunity like that pass? I'd be breaking all the rules." Henley opens her mouth to ask what rules those might be, but Rebecca presses one talon-tipped finger to her own, "Anyway, hush! What was I saying?"

Whatever she wants – Henley sits back, sipping her coffee. She makes a show of being half-interested, of having dismissed Rebecca the moment she first set eyes on her. But beneath it she listens intently, analyses, could repeat it verbatim, and her mind races trying to figure it out.

What did it take to even find her? Henley was deliberately hidden. She's worked in casinos, with the most stringent recruitment processes in the world, in a country that holds a federal file on her full to bursting. She herself does not know how it was done. And yet here Rebecca sits. It would be foolish to believe the phony line she rattles off now – "Oh, I just thought I'd come and congratulate you on your life in hiding, on the run, where you can't even have your own identity anymore. I'm just so happy everything worked out how you wanted. I'm glad you got all that fame and glory you stole from me." Foolish, or extremely arrogant – a flash of fear interrupts Henley's thoughts, that maybe there's a reason she hasn't heard from Danny, that maybe Rebecca got to him first.

Does this constitute an emergency? Who does she contact? What's the real danger? That last question is where Henley gets stuck; how do you even describe this? So far Rebecca has done nothing but endlessly talk and steal a piece of already-stolen pie – now gone except for one last crumb stuck in her lipstick. How do you tell somebody about this and make them understand that there's a threat? In amongst it somewhere, like a switchblade in the mess at the bottom of her purse, there's a threat.

Because her heart is already pounding, it's not until Henley's head begins to spin that she notices anything wrong. The cool sweat might have been situational, but the heat rising up from her chest, burning in her face, that's not normal.

Henley looks down into her coffee. She turned her back on it, while she made tea. She turned her back on Dasko. Now she sends what's left splattering over her blueprints at a swipe. Too late.

Finally, Rebecca stops talking and squeals laughing instead. Checking her watch, "Look at that! I didn't even _need_ five minutes. Three and a half. It's a body-mass thing, you know, you've got nothing to soak it up."

A glance at the door; Henley's fingers twitch in her gloves, feeling thick, clumsy. She'd fumble with all those locks. So she staggers back instead, towards the stairs, the way Rebecca came in. Behind her, little rustles, shuffling feet; Rebecca will follow but doesn't seem to think there's any hurry. She's arranging herself, "Let me see, now, have I got everything I came with? Everything but the sedative, obviously. _You've_ got that now." She's a warped vinyl, an underwater soundtrack. Her voice slides the way the world does when Henley is at the fourth stair and it tilts, pitches her against the rail.

But she gets her feet beneath her body again. Keeps going, putting one in front of the other. She climbs all the way to the stage, the auditorium funereal, shades of grey in the pin-prick safety lights. Off stage, it would be easy; just the long straight aisle to the double doors and the safety of the lobby. She'll fall right past the restaurant. There'll be staff as well as guests, security; Rebecca won't get away, and there'll be help.

Henley lifts her eyes. She looks just once into the dark of the opposite wing before she forces herself forward again, straight on towards it.

"Reeves!" Rebecca is halfway up the stairs, staggering from foot to foot. She bawls breathless, "Reeves! Stop running! You'll make it worse." A groan of exertion, pulling herself up at the end of the banister. "Do you think you're dying? Is that what you're scared of? You're not. Cross my heart and kiss a pig. You're just going to sleep."

 _Sleep_. Just the word itself and it's almost over. Centre-stage, Henley stumbles. She falls to one knee, a spotlight short of a tragic heroine, with _sleep_ washing over her, trying to force her eyes closed. Too powerful, almost, could swallow her up right now.

With one hand, she grabs out, clawing the stage until her fingertips catch the edge of a board. Not enough grip to pull herself along but it gives that sense and gives her the strength to fight a little longer. And it pains her, it really does, to crawl with Rebecca Dasko at her back still laughing between her panting breaths, not knowing why this is happening to her. But it's more important to reach the dark behind the other curtain. Henley keeps going until her shoulder brushes heavy velvet. That's where she falls. She makes sure to do so on an angle, so that she rolls onto her back. One elbow supports her. Her other arm is flung out into shadow.

From this new angle she can watch Rebecca getting closer, shaking step by step on her spike-heels. She's recovered, by now, from dragging herself upstairs, and is clutching fistfuls of papers out of her purse.

"See this? Hello? Still with me? Yes? All these papers are _you_. And I do not mean Abby Valentine. Look at all this _proof_ , ooh, there's just _tonnes_ of stuff here that all tells the good people of the world who you really are! Reeves, precious, you're going to wake up handcuffed to a hospital bed!" Rebecca squeals with delight, drumming little dances on the spot. "Look on the bright side; you'll have your own name back."

Henley puts her last strength into smiling. "Won't work."

"Oh? And how's that?" Henley tries to answer and chokes. Rebecca leans in close, craning, cupping her ear. "How's that, sweetie?"

How that is, is because Henley's hidden hand is holding a rope. She undid the hitch tying it to the stage while Rebecca couldn't help but explain herself. She pretends to choke again. Then, when Rebecca is closest, when her head is right by Henley's shoulder, then she opens her fist and releases the rope.

A five kilo sandbag dropping from the rigging, unfettered by anything but air resistance - that's how it is.

It comes down on the back of Rebecca's neck and she flattens like a dropped doll. Henley winces at the sudden weight crushing down on her right side, tries to wriggle free but hasn't the energy. She hasn't the heart either; if she turns her eyes, she can just see over Rebecca's shoulder, down to where one handful of papers has scattered. Another handful was flung reckless halfway across the stage. There's a whole purse full of it.

She fades out knowing her freedom still hangs in the balance, and depends on nothing more than who wakes up first.


	29. Chapter 29

Crossing Reception in the same hotel, Danny barely thinks twice about following Dylan into the first elevator. It's only once the doors close, and they're trapped in a fully mirrored box with two strangers, that either of them begins to reconsider.

Still, the two girls behind them don't seem to be paying very much attention to anything but themselves. Twins, petite brunettes, they both stand facing the back mirror, busy with hasty make-up. One of them is daubing away freckles with concealer and a sponge. The other is painting some on with a brown pencil and has a tub of bronzer stretching her jacket pocket.

"Christ alive, Evie," the second one mutters, "I don't see how you could be so bloody stupid."

"Oh, leave it out! I got a bit of sun, that's all. We're on the Riviera, Evie, it's going to happen."

In the mirrors to the front, Danny and Dylan both catch each other's brows furrowing. They catch it and catch themselves as a result, straighten their faces, pretend to notice nothing. But the girls have caught themselves too, both biting in their lower lips as if they've given away some great secret. Each and every of them waits to see if any of the others has noticed. Really, they all ought to know that it's already over; you can hide almost anything with mirrors but there are no secrets inside all these reflections.

In a matter of seconds, Danny and Dylan are recognized. A second longer and the sisters, by little hisses and flicks of the eyes, have debated whether or not it's wise to approach them.

The paler one takes a single backward step. It parts them, places her squarely between them. She stretches out one lithe arm and, with the end of her kohl, presses the emergency stop. A statement, not a question, "You're looking for Abigail Valentine."

Dylan nods.

Her sister tries to cut in, "Evie, love, don't-" but a flattened hand asks her to be quiet.

" _Why_ are you looking for her?"

They struggle. For a moment, there's no answer to give. Not that they don't know, just that they've been avoiding the knowing until now. Danny breaks first. "She could be in real danger."

Another silent discussion between Evies. The more golden of the two makes her reluctance very clear. Her sister notes it, dismisses it, and takes charge. She starts the elevator moving again, still upward. But at Henley's floor, only her sister gets off, pushing through them as a final rough proof of the fact that she does not like this. Dylan moves to follow her and the more understanding Evie pulls him back. "She's going to take care of a couple of things. The lady herself isn't in her room right now."

Danny tries to take in what she says without actually listening. He follows her by instinct, movement led by movement. Anything more involved than this, he'll talk, he'll ask questions, he'll think out loud which will mean he'll be _thinking_ and there's nothing he can think right now that he even remotely likes. Every path he might follow leads to Henley and that's not the warm, sunlit destination it usually is. Every time he thinks of her, knowing so little as he does, the thoughts turn dark.

He tries thinking of the twins, instead, the coincidence of them. He tries being grateful for it. But, see, there's no control in coincidence. To come through, not by your own strength, but by no more than twisting fate, Danny has trouble considering that a victory at all. Even if the Evies can bring them to Henley, he'll always catch on the idea of what might have happened if they'd never met them.

This is one of those darker places he was telling you about, the turns his mind keeps taking. Luckily by the time he shakes this one off they have followed her to the backstage door, and she is undoing the locks.

Dylan is first through, then Danny. Evie doesn't follow, but stays to keep watch. " _Twins_ ," Dylan groans. Danny seizes; it's too easy, too normal, too much like conversation when they don't know what's waiting down the bare wood stairs. But before he can say anything, "Henley got _twins_ , how'd she get twins…? _I_ don't have twins. Y'know, I'd trade any two of you guys for a pair of twins? No offence."

"How do I not take offence at that?"

"It's a logistical thing, it's purely for the purposes of putting a show together. The things you can do with _twins_ -"

"Stop emphasising it, it sounds-" His line breaks right here where the stairs turn. Beneath them, Henley's coffee-stained blueprints sliding off the table, her folder spilling over the floor. He sees it in blurry single frames, like pictures taken too fast, and breathes out, "Wrong."

The sight of a damp footprint, a very high heel grinding the painstaking plans into the concrete, leads him; Danny follows the angle of it, the fading step after, and finds the stageside stairs. He follows half-blind, leaving Dylan behind him along with all thought and everything else, and at the top of the flight staggers into the same disorienting half-light that almost finished Henley as she fled. He sees her, the heavier shadow in the crushing dark at the base of the wing. Her name escapes him; he doesn't want to, knows she's somewhere where she can't hear him, but he breathes it out.

He rushes to her, falling to kneel at her side, and shoves Dasko's dead weight from her arm and chest. For a moment he even smiles at the sight of the sandbag and Dasko's bruised neck. For that he couldn't be prouder. Good thing too; that pride is all he's got to temper his fear, and the rage that swells up tight against his ribs when he sees Henley's ragged fingernails and knows she had to claw to get this far.

He tries to waken her. Long after it's become clear that she's deeper than sleep, out of reach, Danny is still trying. Under his breath, "You should have never been here alone. What's the point of us if you still end up alone?"

Something about that word, he realizes, alone is exactly what he is. Danny lifts his head for the first time, looking for anybody, any help. "Dylan!"

Still down in the prop store, "Just a second." But a second is too much. In the dark with Henley's head cradled in his lap, with Rebecca not feet away and nothing he can do about her, it's too much. There's silence, too much of that too; his thinking surges back to fill it. _Don't_ , he tells himself _, Not now, don't lose it_ , but there's no stopping it now. It comes as a story, or like a film he can't shut off until it rolls right off the reel.

Ask Danny to tell it to you, and he won't. He understands the importance of the secret.

But if he were to drop his guard, if he thought you could be trusted, if his brain was moving faster than he can and it was being told anyway, he'd tell you Henley was taken from the Horsemen just over a year ago. The word 'taken' would be used advisedly; the decision did not come from her, and no alternative options were presented. It came as an instruction. Free of messy explanations, down from on high looking clean and pure. It disguised itself as a simple request, appealing to her most basic professional instincts.

 _We need something up our sleeve._ _Disappear._ _Hide in plain sight_.

The kind of orders that used to be delivered by archangels. The kind of orders you are not expected to refuse. You're free to, of course, you are always free. It's just that the story gets damn short if you refuse.

But Henley was far from ready for her final chapter. Refusal never crossed her mind. Ten minutes after the proposal she was planning her exit strategy. It was only when she realized her only clean exit came at Danny's expense that she might have wavered.

 _Might have_ , Danny always says; hard to be sure, considering it didn't stop her. These days, with the facts known and hindsight kicking in, he knows he should have seen it. The buttons pushed and the other ways she amped their usual bickering into the full-fledged firefights the last days came to were not subtle. And she was always so quick to give in, building the pretence of resignation that meant the other Horsemen might have been upset when Henley demanded an out, but they were never shocked.

And then she was gone. Even now that he's more informed, Danny's not fully clued in on the process, of how it happened, but Henley disappeared out of one life, out of his, and into another elsewhere.

That they're back in touch at all was an accident. The first Abigail Valentine show produced just happened to hit the stage round about the time Dylan was recruiting for Henley's replacement. Dylan just happened to come down with the flu the same day he was supposed to see it, in Atlantic City. He might have sent Jack or Merritt in his place as easily as Danny. And only that Danny took a wrong turn off the labyrinth of the casino floor, he never would have seen her rushing to the secured backstage door.

The hair and wardrobe changes barely registered. He'd know her anywhere. By the tilt of her chin and the force behind every step she takes; they could have put her in some whole other body, Danny would know her by her certainty, by her purpose.

Why this story? Why is _this_ the particular torture his mind chooses to inflict on itself in the dead moments before Dylan's footsteps on the stairs, why is this the story, why does it choose now to play out cinematic for him? His first thought is that their life is flashing before his eyes. His second is that it's the coincidences again, that it's all this fate which makes him angry. If not for all those accidents they might never have met again. Never have started up the letters, the postcards, the secrets and lies. If not for all those accidents he'd be in Rome right now trying to puzzle out what happened to Lula and glad, so glad, that Henley was an ocean away from that, and safe.

This is a darker path than most of the others. Danny wouldn't turn away from it, except that Dylan's approaching steps stop dead halfway across the stage. Danny glances back and, just at the corner of his eye, catches sight of him picking something up off the boards.

When Dylan sees him looking, he straightens. Where he walked purposefully before, now he is gentle, tentative. "She won't wake 'til she's good and ready," he says. He _might_ be about to tell Danny what she was drugged with, except that his eyes light on Dasko.

Before he can even ask the question, Danny shows him the sandbag in answer. It makes him smile too. "That's my girl. But that method's not so reliable; _she_ could come round any time. We need to get Henley out of here."

Dylan stops short of offering any more practical advice on that subject. Another exit would be good, since the two of they know of both cross reception. Some sort of distraction would be great, considering she'll need to be carried. Any other night, Danny would have no problem filling in these blanks on his own. He'd have solutions already, and equal to or greater than the ones Dylan ought to be giving him. Any other night, or cradling any other head.

In the current circumstances, he glances back over his shoulder to see Dylan gathering papers off the stage. "What is that?"

"Nothing. Come on, get up, pick her up," and Danny does as he's told but all the while keeping one eye on Dylan, who is still gathering sheets and flyers, looking over the edge to check none have drifted into the front row, that there are none upstage.

He finds the source of them to be Rebecca's purse. He finds something else in there too, with impeccable timing; it allows him to ignore Danny repeating his question.

What he fishes out is a hipflask. In the time it takes Danny to arrange Henley comfortably in his arms, he has flipped Dasko over so her bruised neck is not immediately obvious, and emptied the flask. There's more on Dasko's dress than over her mouth, and just enough left to bleed a little pool when he stages it fallen from her hand. It's all done in a matter of seconds and with such brusque efficiency that Danny finds himself staring. "Okay, I need you to tell me, even if it isn't true, that you've never planted evidence like that before."

Passing him into the wings, "I've never planted evidence like that before."

"Only it looked like you'd done that before."

"You want me to lie to you or not?"

"Mostly now I want you to tell me you know where you're going. Can we even get out this way?"

"One can only assume."

"Assume? Seriously? Based on what?"

"Well," and Dylan points, his finger a tawny blur in the near perfect dark, " _she_ got in."

As his eyes adjust, Danny sees her first because of her watch. She lights the face in dim green pulses with the press of a button. Hissing to them across the wings, "This way, gents. Watch the lady's head, there's a strut there-" Danny twists sideways just in time to spare Henley the knock. It's the same woman as before, or maybe her sister; hard to tell in the dark how tanned she is. She's holding a fire door a half-inch open at her back. As they get close she leans to the edge of it, shares a hushed word with someone keeping watch on the other side. At the same time, Dylan is picking a few of the papers out of Rebecca's purse, folding them up to stuff in a pocket.

Danny can't ask both of them what they're doing. Stuck in between, Evie beats him to speaking at all. She opens the door to reveal her double on the other side. Nodding at Henley, "Is she alright?"

"She will be," Dylan tells them.

The Evie inside takes the slightest step and, by this and the angling of her body, divides Danny and Dylan. Dylan slips back into the dark a little. He seems to be taking the girl with him. Danny, quite against his will, finds himself edged toward the light, where the other Evie takes hold of his arm. "Come on," she says. "I can get you to her room, but we have to be careful."

A glance over his shoulder and Danny sees Dylan giving Rebecca's purse over to his Evie. Telling her, "Get rid of that."

"Wait-"

"Bit short on time, mate," and the sister is pulling at him, checking left and right down the hallway behind her. But Danny can hear them still talking, discussing now what Dylan wants done with Rebecca. Found, he says, public, lots of police. He says it with a vicious edge Danny doesn't like, still touching the papers in his pocket. "As in _now_ , Mr Atlas," his own Evie hisses. She stops pulling his arm. Instead, her fingers close tight on his elbow, pressing a nerve that weakens it, or maybe just reminds him of Henley, getting heavier the longer he holds her.

Dylan turns to him. "Go. I'm right behind you."

It's a lie. Danny couldn't say how he knows it, but it's a lie. And yet he goes. He lets himself be led despite the screaming of every instinct he has that he should stand his ground. And even when he tries to justify it, waiting for the assistant to unjam the service elevator with the footsteps of hotel staff approaching round the corner, telling himself that Henley is more important, he has a hard time believing it.

No, that's not true. She _is_ more important. But that was never in question. What he means, he doesn't believe this is best for her. He doesn't believe this is all he can do to keep her safe. He believes that has a lot more to do with the contents of Rebecca's purse, and believes too that he may never see that again.

In the elevator, Evie searches Henley's pockets for the room key. Talking all the while, not just the usual 'It'll be okay' but, "I'll get rid of her P.A. for the next twenty-four hours. I'll leave both our numbers, me and my sister. If you need anything we can get it done. Don't worry about the hotel management, we'll take care of that."

He stops her between two of these calm reassurances, "You know exactly who she is, don't you?"

She smiles. "We knew well before she ever came to hire us."

"There's a reward, you know."

"Well, yeah, but it's in _dollars_. With the exchange rate to sterling what it is, hardly worth it." The wink before she darts back to the controls is the most comfort he's had, and makes a lot easier to follow her out onto another plush carpet corridor. Quieter up here but you still hear the sea, drifting in at the French doors at the other end of the hall. It's not a sound that has ever seemed threatening before. Maybe it's just that this whole night, the past week of nights and nights before that even, seem designed and determined to swallow Danny whole. Maybe he's never felt like he was drowning before.

Evie holds the door open, moves around the room pulling drapes tight, writing down those numbers but honestly, she's out of his mind long before she's out of sight. He lays Henley out on the bed and sits next to her, her hand in his.

Except that the last thing the vanishing assistant says is, "I'll go and see if Mr Shrike needs anything," he'd forget even to text Dylan the room number.

The reply is unexpected. Both in that Danny didn't expect a reply at all, he expected Dylan to come in person, and in what it says.

 _Change of plan_ , is the message, and Danny's immediate instinct is to deny this and read no further. _Stay with H._ _Going to try and fix this._ _Couple of hours tops._

Danny tries calling, and the phone only rings and rings. So he changes numbers and tack, calls Merritt instead. The answer from back in Rome comes midway through the first ring.

Before anything else, Danny asks, "How's Lula?"

"About how you'd expect. And Henley?"

"…About the same as Lula."

Merritt hisses curses away from the receiver and swings back, "What the hell is happening? Where's Dylan?"

"That's why I called. You remember what we talked about last night?" Another pause, a darker kind; there's really no forgetting that sort of conversation. You never want to have it. You never want to sit with a teammate and formulate your own Plan B, behind a leader's back. You never want to be in the position where you need one and, all the while you're having that conversation, you are entirely convinced that there's no way you'll ever need to use it. Still, that's what they did. Last night, while Jack slipped home to take care of Lula, while Dylan was arranging safe passage to Monte Carlo, Danny and Merritt were discussing how they might take care of themselves. "Can you make it work?"

"Are you sure? I need you to be sure, Atlas. _Really_ damn sure."

Danny looks one more time at Henley. Death-still, fever red lips, clammy with sweat, "I'm sure."


	30. Chapter 30

Believe him when he tells you, Dylan would rather answer his phone. Whether Danny chose to make his points clear and cogent or just to whine, Dylan could go twenty rounds right now, would do so gladly, would do it with a good heart, he'd give it his all and never grimace or complain.

But honestly, Dylan would rather break his own fingers than be where he is right now, so it's really not much of a competition.

They were waiting for him. When the twin assistant ran out the auditorium doors to raise the alarm, he left the way they'd come, through the prop store. As he'd suspected, even the doormen rushed to see what was going on. One young lady was stuck at the reception desk, but on her feet, bent right over the counter, craning her neck. Dylan walked by not an inch from her nose and only got in her way. He left at the abandoned main door completely unnoticed.

At that point, it really was his intention to double back. Round the side of the building, along the beach, there's a staff entrance the twin told him about. He would have gone directly to it. Whatever the situation, whether it was clear or not, he would have gotten back in. Security wasn't really a consideration. He was getting back first and foremost to Henley and, once sure she was alright, to Danny, to try and figure this out.

But they were waiting for him. An elegant black car purred at the foot of the pale stone steps. Not out of place at a Monte Carlo casino, could have been anybody, but the sight of it held him. Too central, too deliberate, too obviously waiting. It was the obviousness that should have given it away. _Caricature_ ; the word crept into his mind, making his heart race and his palms sweat, in the same moment the back door opened. A nightmare unfolded from the dark interior; boxy, pugilistic shapes squeezed into a suit tailored to a much smaller man, all the height coming from the tapering legs, so that the entire creature seems to be triangular. On top of the bridge-broad shoulders, and not quite in the middle, a wide box of a head, entirely encased in a leather mask like a luchador's. That mask has been roughly smeared with white greasepaint, and a red nose attached to it with huge, messy stitches.

Tight enough to choke it – and Dylan really has considered grabbing hold and giving it a go – it wears a white tie on which a more traditional clown leers threateningly from behind a spurting seltzer bottle.

It stepped back from the open door and left the way clear for Dylan.

He could have walked away. You can always walk away. Contrary to popular belief, fate and vocation don't really care if you take them up on their offers. But, and he learned this from Henley, walk away and you end the whole tale. Fate moves on to the next guy without a thought and it leaves you nothing, being nothing, having nothing. He hesitated a second, thinking of what he's got. He's got Henley drugged and almost revealed to the world. He's got Lula terrified and had her silent disappointment before, at the train station, when he tried to tell her all this. He has the void left over where he used to believe that Rebecca Dasko was his only problem.

He's got responsibilities to his people and hasn't been living up to them. He texted Danny and started down the steps.

That's how come he's in that car now, pressed up as tight as he can get to one window, away from the red nosed monster at the other end of the seat. It took his phone, slipped it out of his pocket as he passed at the door. It held him back with one hand when he grabbed for it, before pushing it into the breast pocket of the suit, patting it; _Safe and sound_.

Dylan knows exactly how many times Danny tried to call purely because the jacket is so tight, he can hear the vibrations beating against the clown's concrete chest.

Should have done this sooner; the last pair of envoys probably wouldn't have been so thorough, so competent, definitely weren't so intimidating. On the plus side, this one doesn't talk. And it's not a long journey either; mere minutes along the same road, another plush casino hotel. More marble, more gilt, all of it the same and yet… Something is different here. Call it the atmosphere, the speed of life; people come and go but seem to float, and conversation is a subdued mumble. A sense of pleasure, but not of fun.

All the shivers that have been rattling Dylan's bones stop so that he can sit straighter, frozen. It's nothing to do with the constant undercurrent of fear and the part of himself he can't bury deep enough to mute its screaming, but a different sort of discomfort. That's when he gets it; this place is richer. Dylan can't get used to being around money. He's tried. It's important, in both his current line of work and the one he pursued formerly, to be able to fit in anywhere. He's tried exposing himself to it, tried training himself on when and when not to be impressed, and none of it ever works.

The same might be said of anyone who grew up in circumstances where money was always an issue and never a boon. Going to meet any other enemy, he'd wonder if they knew that, if they had done this deliberately to disconcert him.

Going to meet this enemy, he doesn't wonder. He knows they knew. They know everything.

The first time he ever set foot inside a circus tent, they already knew his name.

The car pulls out around the main building. At the side, a roadblock lifts without any apparent intervention to let them pass, gliding through the dark between two lights. Dylan's fists ball, just in case, but are never called for. Though he can all too clearly picture himself found by the morning's light on that narrow private road, his face carved open either side in a smile like theirs, the silent brick of pending-insanity next to him never moves. The enormous, white-gloved hands stay folded neatly in its lap. Dylan is unbruised, except perhaps mentally, when they are driven back into the safety of sedate yellow lights.

It seems to be some sort of private terrace; a little paved bulge out over deserted white sands, where the water laps close, giving back the black night and splinters of moonlight. A bottle of champagne sits in an ice bucket on an ornate stand by a small round table. The glasses on that are cut crystal. One is fresher than the other; less stage-paint printed around its rim. It must have been brought to replace the one that was broken. Somebody has tried to sweep up but a few lethal diamonds stick between the stones. The glint of them is the muffled cry of a warning through a gag; there was violence here, and could be again.

But Dylan doesn't need trace evidence to tell him that.

At the table, two men are playing cards. The first is about the size of the envoy who brought him here, but gone to seed; a heavy gut, swags beneath the chin and upper arms. He sits hunched over the table, studying his cards with the intense concentration of an idiot trying very hard. Most of his face is behind his shoulder, and a fraying straw hat hides the rest. Dylan is glad of that; the hideous disguise it has adopted, that of a tourist in a half-open Hawaiian shirt, socks-and-sandals, too many gold chains, is distressing enough on its own.

His player-partner is similarly dressed, if a little more sedate. He's skinny and straight-backed, with tiny round glasses perched on the end of his nose. Because he is black he has opted out of the traditional make-up, and has instead painted precise spots of neon pink on either cheek, orange on the tip of his nose, yellow brows and lips. Over the tourist get-up hangs a long white lab-coat, and there's a medical mirror strapped to his forehead.

So Dylan takes a wild guess and, nodding all the deference he can bear to, addresses that one, "Doctor." Turning to the other, he tries, he really does, "Pantal-" but at this the bigger creature lifts his head. It shows him dirty white make-up caught in all the sags and pillows of his face and Dylan flinches, never quite finishes.

"Well, it is _about_ time," Doc prisses. "I must say, I'm a little disappointed we had to resort to sending a car."

 _Lie_ , Dylan warns himself. _You need what they know and you know what they want to hear, so just lie and get it over with_. "There was absolutely no disrespect meant by it-"

Another flinch when Pantalone bellows, "Like hell there wasn't!", but this time Dylan doesn't let it stop him.

He wheels on the enraged elder, not missing a beat, "We were in preparations for a performance, there wasn't time." This sudden flash of bravery might carry him either further, except that by a tip of his enormous head, Pantalone is calling over the masked clown from the car. It comes to stand at the boss's shoulder and this time the white-gloved hands are cracking out their knuckles. Dylan stumbles back, just a half-step.

The Doctor takes pity. "Panty, calm down."

"I don't like excuses…"

"I don't think it's an excuse. I think-" A break here, the first choked breath of a stifled laugh, "I think he really _believes_ that to be a viable explanation."

Another choke. Pantalone's painted lips close over his gritted teeth, smirking, warbling. They both break into laughter in the same moment; even the bodyguard's shoulders shake, until Pantalone reaches out and slaps his arm, "Get the man a chair, Valerie."

Dylan is barely aware of himself; he thinks he makes some attempt to refuse but it couldn't be too fervent or effective, because the chair is brought and he finds himself at the table as Doc deals them both a fresh hand of cards. He definitely manages to avoid being cut in, and is proud of himself for that.

The problem is not fear. He tells himself that a thousand times if once, even as his clammy hands clutch the sides of the chair, _I am not afraid of clowns_. The problem is what to _do_ with them. Dylan is generally pretty good with people, at predicting their reactions and eliciting the ones he wants. But these, these creatures, these nightmares, their reactions aren't human. They operate on some other level. There are rules, yes, there is some sort of order, there must be or they wouldn't all behave the same way. But it's an order Dylan has no access to, rules he's not sure he could ever learn even if he wanted to.

He doesn't, by the way. Want to. He wants nothing less. As painful as it is to sit here and not understand a single thing they do, it would be worse if it all suddenly made sense to him. He'd worry, if that happened.

"Now, young man," comes Doc's more patient voice again, "You say you couldn't see us because you were busy with a performance, yes? But we knew that. We know everything. I don't think I need to explain to you, do I?"

Dylan manages a tight little shake of his head.

"Alright then. Tell me, if we knew you were so busy, why wouldn't we leave you to it? Why would we add to your worries right when you had quite enough of them?"

Because it was urgent. Because it mattered. Because… Because Doc is peering around into his face and Pantalone is cupping one ear, because they will wait forever for him to answer before they'd ever spare him the pain, "Because it had something to do with the performance."

A brief but bright cheer from them both. "We would have told you-" Pantalone declares, and with one frankfurter finger stabs the table so hard Dylan hears the iron legs rattle, " _not_ to perform."

"Not to split up," Doc continues.

"And to pay very careful attention to any mysterious visitors, any blasts from the past. Now tell us, little Dyllie, did you do any of these things?"

He's here because of what happened at the performance, he's alone, and he's never shared a single word with Dasko personally. They know this. They're waiting again for him to admit it but this time they can wait; admitting it to himself is punishment enough. So, choosing his words very carefully, and choosing very carefully to address Doc as much as possible, Dylan tries instead, "Why would that have been the advice?"

Pantalone mimics a gameshow buzzer, "Uh-uh. Too late for that."

"Now, be kind," Doc tells him gently. "He's trying to learn from his mistakes."

"I still feel like we could teach him better with a baseball bat."

"Neanderthal."

"Maybe, but you're the reason the kids can't follow orders."

"The children have _explained_ how that misunderstanding arose and I, for one, believe them, so-" The argument goes on. Dylan lets it. Not only does he have no idea how to interrupt, and no leverage to bring them back to the former topic, but it's a little breathing room. If they're fighting with each other, they're forgetting him. He uses the time to regroup. Another meeting of this kind he'd be studying, watching to see what their triggers are, what buttons he can press. Today he'll settle for making himself stop shaking. _I am not afraid of clowns, I'm not, I'm afraid of what they know and what they can do but not specifically of_ -

"Of course you are."

Dylan snaps to attention. Doc spoke, and spoke looking at him. But by the time he's caught up, the piercing eyes are elsewhere, and the discussion doesn't seem to have ended. Besides, it couldn't have meant him. Couldn't have. He never spoke out loud and they don't read minds. They don't. It would explain a lot but the laws of nature and logic don't allow for it and so, Dylan is one-hundred-percent sure, they don't read minds.

"The children wouldn't lie if you didn't work so hard at terrifying them."

Pantalone rolls his eyes, but hasn't a ready answer this time. After a little consideration, "True." He stretches back for the champagne bottle, tops up his own glass and Doc's. It's another thing Dylan manages to refuse. "But I have to have a little fun sometimes. One lump or two?"

"Just the one. _I_ might be on vacation but my _waistline_ doesn't know that."

Pantalone uncaps a silver dish of sugar cubes and, with frankly unbelievable dexterity for the size and thickness of those fingers, picks up one with tiny tongs and drops it into Doc's glass.

While it dissolves – and somehow the question of child-rearing has been set to one side – Doc sighs and contemplates Dylan. A grave decision is made behind the precision-painted face and he nods at the glass, "That's champagne, but here's the T, Alice." Pantalone laughs, grunts something like 'very good'. "Our organization has become aware of a considerable threat to yours. Technically we've been aware of it for weeks. But you were busy."

"I apologized for that."

"Actually you didn't."

Dylan stops his teeth grinding, takes a deep enough breath to attempt sincerity, "Then I apologize now. I thought I could handle it. Clearly I was wrong. Now _please_ -" he takes a moment to bite down the desperation that almost eked through there, "You say _my_ organization, you mean the Eye? Because there must be somebody higher up you could have gone after."

A blast of laughter from Pantalone, "Never _ever_ think we overestimate you, little Dyllie."

"What he means, there are plenty of people we might have spoken to. But as you've begun to see, you are the one in trouble. There are those – we've had a little trouble finding out exactly _who_ but we're working at it – who feel that the Eye has become… let's say, too big for its boots. Too egotistic. Too _arrogant_."

Dylan shoots away from him, hauled to the other side by Pantalone's meaty fist tightening suddenly around his arm. "That's all the lesson you get. Now for the pop quiz – pretend you're the boogeyman. You want to target an organization for its arrogance and publicity-seeking. What do you do, Junior?"

"What _do_ you do?" Doc sings, goggle-eyed, grinning.

That's an easy question. The answer is basic; one of those lessons that doesn't require teaching so much as unearthing, excavated out of common sense. You already know, you've just never thought about it. And for Dylan, who has all his life manipulated outcomes by reading the pre-existing situation, he barely even has to think. How do you punish the Eye for stepping out of the shadows? You put them back in. You crush out arrogance by removing the public face.

It's logic. A-B-C.

Destroy the Horsemen.


	31. Chapter 31

"-Also, apparently there are clowns involved somewhere, but I'm really getting convinced that's some kind of code everybody's in on but me. And I know, I know, I know exactly what you'd say if you were awake, that I'm paranoid and it's not the first time I've jumped to some crazy conclusion about what everybody else was thinking about me. I know you'd bring up that time with the cake and I'd concede that, it was a nice surprise, should've just let it happen. But it makes sense this time, because of Rebecca, because there's this connection between me and her and maybe there are things they're discussing, y'know, clown things, that can't be allowed to get back to her, I mean, I'd understand, I just wish they'd have told me that because it's been a weird thing to figure out. I really did think clowns were a thing for a while and…" Danny stops, though for no other reason than that he's talked his throat dry and chokes. He strokes Henley's hair, lifts her head just enough to plump the pillow beneath it. "Please come round. I can't keep talking to myself and I can't stop while you're still out."

It won't work. Just asking a comatose person to wake up, it doesn't work. Even when you see it on TV, it doesn't work, however bad the show might be. Still, same as all those people you see on shows, Danny waits. Three, four seconds, five until his held breath burns and he sighs it away.

"I know I'm not supposed to miss you." No longer speed-talking, a gear shift down into something more like honesty. He's barely conscious of it, but he has decided to take advantage of the opportunity; these are things he'd never say if he thought she could hear him. "The way you tried to leave it, I was supposed to be too angry to miss you. And even now that I know, it's supposed to be this big heroic gesture you're making and I respect that and… And I do miss you. It's not a faith thing, I don't resent it. I just miss you, that's all. Little things, like seeing you smile when you've got headphones on and wondering what song did that. I just miss you being ar-"

He breaks off cursing, sitting bolt upright at the interruption of the telephone. Old-fashioned, it trills like a fire alarm on the dresser. His heart shakes as fast as the bells at first. By the time it passes he's on his feet, on his way to it, snatching the receiver out of the cradle, "Hello?"

Nothing. Not even a heavy breath. Not even static or background noise; the muffled dead of a hand clamped over the mouthpiece.

"Hello? Dylan, is that you?"

Nothing, more of it, miles of nothing, and then even the velvet drops. Danny listens to the dial tone like it might be a joke. Not a funny one, but he'll take about anything just now. Even before he gives up and puts the receiver back, he's already thinking through the implications. If that was someone he knows, they're in trouble. If it wasn't, then someone now knows he's in the room.

"Please wake up," he says again, though too low for anyone to hear. It won't work. Henley's out, can't be left, can't be moved with any ease or security. He grabs for his cell phone while he drags the dresser chair to the door and jams it under the handle. Dylan hasn't answered any of his messages, doesn't answer another attempt at a call. He'd get an answer from anybody back in Rome, but what can they do? The Evies, the twin assistants, he has their numbers.

The first one he tries, he gets a message which is quite plainly for him – _At the cop shop answering some questions about the drunk blonde, try my sister._

The second one answers. "I'll check with Reception," she says, "See if they put anybody through, and then I'll come straight up."

That, at least, is something, but nowhere near enough. Danny paces like an animal from the door to the balcony and back again. Tries Dylan again, no answer again. Tries, again, "Please wake up." Again, even though three is supposed to be the magic number, and if you want something badly enough and it's important it's supposed to come true, it doesn't work.

Insanity is doing things the same way and expecting different results. Powerlessness is _knowing_ you'll get the same results and trying again anyway. Danny's not familiar with either feeling but he feels them both pressing close, breathing on him, right next to each other; must be why it's so easy to go crazy when you're trapped.

Then, in the silence outside the rush of blood in his ears, he hears footsteps. Footsteps and a creak, a little squeal that repeats itself for every six inches or so of landing it passes over. He stops, absolutely still, listening. What else can he do?

The steps come directly to the door. Not a false alarm, they don't pass by. No possibility that somebody got a wrong number and Danny really is just paranoid. Honestly, right now, he'd kill to be the controlling basket-case and as prone to apocalyptic thinking as everybody generally believes. And, of course, _this_ , right now, with nobody around to witness it, _this_ is when all his controlling, apocalyptic paranoia proves justified.

Whoever is at the door takes their time; a rustle of clothes being straightened, a cough to clear a throat. Danny is painfully aware of all of it. Still, when the fist is raised and knocks hard, he shudders. A part of him wants to hold his tongue. Stay quiet, pretend no one's home. But he answered the phone, didn't he?

"Who's there?"

"Housekeeping, baby!"

It's after eleven at night and the woman's voice is laughing, lit all over with a twang straight out of the seventies, orange rayon and slide guitars and after-hours discos. It's also not French. Danny is far from comforted. "Not right now," he tries. He tries to knowing what the result will be. Now that he finds himself standing between the two, he's not sure insanity and powerlessness are any different to each other.

The voice loses none of its honey music and comes back through a pout, "Oh, but I won't take but a minute or two."

Hands try the door handle. Finding it jammed, a shoulder tries harder. The chair jolts, but doesn't give.

On instinct, Danny goes to Henley. He sits by her, one hand in hers and the other still holding his phone.

Another jolt; the legs of the chair gouge the carpet, but only a couple of inches, not enough. It's okay. "It's okay," and he really does believe he's telling Henley this, in spite of the fact she hasn't listened to a word he's said until now. He almost repeats it, even, but the words are stolen by the end of a mop handle. It creeps through the new gap at the edge of the door and rattles around looking for the chair. Danny bounces back, ready to go and throw all his weight against the door, just to hold this would-be intruder out until somebody notices.

Then, even as he wishes it, "Excuse me, but what the hell are you doing?" Evie, whichever one he's got, her cultured English voice gone brassy with all the power she tries to put behind it. Danny's relief goes so deep as to be embarrassing, so deep he wouldn't admit it to anything more intelligent than a rabbit.

But his brow furrows when she doesn't get an answer. 'Housekeeping' doesn't attempt to keep up the act. "Didn't you hear me?" and Evie is stalking closer. Too late to yell, to warn her, Danny sees the mop handle slide back out the door again. "I asked you what-"

A swift crack, and then the soft thuds of a body crumpling against the wall.

"Okay, enough!" Danny grabs the chair away, yanks the door open. "Enough. What do you want?" His eyes try to go left to where he heard the twin fall. He never gets to check if she's okay. Left or right, up or down, there's only one thing in front of his eyes. Staring, lips parted, he breathes out stunned, " _Not code_..."

A shovel of a hand presses his chest, shoving him backward into the room. In the platform heels of her thigh-high boots, she's a foot taller than he is, and her afro – too precise to be anything but a wig, too perfect a bubble – adds another foot still to brush the lintel. Housekeeping eases her Amazonian frame inside at a slant, then reaches back for the linen cart with its squeaking wheel. Her aqua green smock looks genuine enough. It bears the name 'Collie' embroidered in simple cursive on the top pocket. You'd trust the smock, really you would, even Danny could almost trust it – except that she wears it without pants, with only diamante-studded fishnets bridging the gap between the hem and the boots.

Neon blue lips, and a matching heart painted on her cheekbone where a beauty spot would be.

Not code. It was never code. The clowns are real, very, very real. Danny stands with his back against the balcony door, just staring. Everything is forgotten – the twin in the hallway, Dylan not answering his phone, even Henley still at the corner of his eye – in the sudden reality of the clowns.

With a beaming smile, as if there had been no violence, no breaking and entering, Collie drops one hip, "You ain't gotta watch me, hon. I'm only working. " Then, winking, "'Course, you can if you want to."

"What do you want?" Danny tries again. With all that's passed for prologue, he really ought not expect an answer.

"I done _told_ you, baby; gotta get this place nice and clean. Why –" She stops to lift the chair back to the dresser. She grabs it by one of the back spindles like it weighed nothing at all. " – Look at the mess you made already. And this lady here!" Her eyes light on Henley. Danny tries to beat her there but only runs into one of those hands again, bouncing off it. "Asleep in her clothes! My mama just would not have _stood_ for such a thing."

Collie picks up Henley's wrist, two fingers pressing tight against the veins underneath it. Taking a pulse. Her eyes on her wristwatch, the blue lips keep moving, the flawless, river-like bubbling of an oldies station DJ, "Mama always said cleanliness was next to godliness. S'why I do this job when most folks wouldn't. Now what you staring for, baby? Ain't you never had your soul saved by a hotel maid? Ever had _something else_ saved, hm?"

"What are you d-"

"Shh, honey-pie, Collie's trying to count."

Danny didn't even _believe_ in this lunatic or any like her until a couple of minutes ago. Even looking at her now, Collie might be nothing more than a paranoid fantasy come to life, some visual manifestation of everything he's scared of, brought on by hours of talking to himself in figurative dark. Then again, he can feel his collarbone bruising. He can feel it because of the quickening rise and fall of his chest. What do you do? How do you deal with someone who is operating on a whole other plane, a permanent state of psychotic ad lib? He finds himself frozen, and recognizes the feeling because he's seen it happen to Dylan. Every time the clowns are _mentioned_ , Dylan seizes. Powerlessness; without a copy of the script, you can't get in the scene.

So he'll leave it. Henley doesn't seem to be in any immediate danger, but out in the hall, he has yet to hear Evie move again. He's not in this scene, so he'll make his own, and end all of them at once by drawing attention.

A break from frozen, a half-step short of run. But as he rounds the end of the bed, Collie drops Henley's arm and lashes out, grabbing the back of his shirt with neon pink nails. Struggling, he half-turns, enough to see her other hand reach up into the perfect mushroom cloud of her hair.

A shift, the quality of attention he's getting changes. Danny begins to feel less like a captive audience, more like a co-star.

Collie only smiles. When her hand emerges again, it is holding a snub-nosed little gun.

Danny glances at her over Collie's shoulder. Still backing away, he comes up against the dresser, feels the cool of the mirror at the back of his neck. He slips sideways. The clown never changes her pace, her easy steps, but he lets her follow. In fact, he lets her corner him. Then he looks over at the bed again. There's no change, of course, not a twitch. But Danny furrows his brow, a momentary pretence of surprise, and then the pretence of trying to cover it up.

Collie thinks Henley must have wakened. She glances back the same way and sees her mistake too late; Danny snatches the gun out of her hand, turning her wrist in the same second so it won't matter if she pulls the trigger.

He has it for all of a second – long enough to get it in both hands and point it back at the owner – before Collie turns back. Grinning already, her shoulders shaking. One hand comes up to hide her mouth, almost as if she doesn't want to laugh at him.

The 'gun' has all the weight of a water pistol. Warm and clammy like dime-store plastic, which it very much is. Something inside has broken off and rattles around inside the handle.

Danny points it at the floor and pulls the trigger. All that shoots out is a little unfurling flag marked _Bang_.

He throws it down on the dresser, shoves past Collie on his way back to Henley. He never should have left her in the first place. "Unbelievable," he mutters.

"Un-bee - _leev_ -able!" Collie's plastic talons scratch the table grabbing up the gun again. She spins with it, and pulls the trigger again. This time there is more resistance, its click is less childish. Because, this time, something fires.

Long and thin, incredibly sharp, it spikes Danny's neck hot as a spider bite. He loses his footing in the same instant. By the time he collapses, side-by-side with Henley, there's a numb tingling in his knees. Both hands stretch out, clumsy and twitching. One grabs for Henley's; it's all the desperate apology he can give when his tongue won't respond anymore.

The other grabs to see what he was shot with.

The dart he yanks free is tipped with blood and empty now of toxins. Dangling from it, a little flag marked _Bang_.

* * *

[A/N - folks, I'm not sure how many people really follow this tale, but just in case - I just moved home and, though I have all sorts of reminders set and I've got a good few chapters stockpiled, I may miss a post/fall behind/whatever. Forgive a gal, if it comes to it.]


	32. Chapter 32

Dylan escapes the meet with Panty and Doc feeling like one who has _wakened_. Like he's stepping back into cool reality, back into a world where the rules apply. The twisted logic of the nightmare is behind him. So he thinks, anyway.

You ought to note – you who have the capacity to see it all, to be in two places at once, you who have the capacity to note these things – Dylan is making said-escape round about the same time Collie is making her entrance at Henley's hotel room. It really won't matter very much; by the time Dylan gets all the way back there, it will be long over. All shimmer of the circus arts will have dissipated. But it's worth stating. None of those involved are in a position to appreciate the irony. Someone ought to.

Someone ought to be chewing their nails and shaking their head and whimpering at the futility of it all while they watch Dylan walking along the lamp-lit beach promenade, daring to believe that his ordeal is over. He's planning, as he leaves that private terrace. He could learn his lesson, he tells himself, he could follow their advice. It's too late not to perform, of course, but the rest could be doable. Get the whole team back in one place. Hide them. Make sure everybody keeps their head down until they figure out what's happening. Someone ought to curse under their breath when he tells himself it's not too late to speak to Dasko either. The police have nothing to hold her on, right? They'll have to release her, and Dylan plans to be there when she is. He plans the questions he needs answered and the best ways to get her to talk.

Five minutes along the coast, all his plans are in place. He is almost beginning to feel in control again.

Maybe that's his mistake. Certainly that's when it begins. There is an almost casual cruelty in the way the night unfolds its punishments for him.

Unfair, isn't it? It's not as if he ever let his guard down. It's not like he jumped the gun. He didn't assume, or presume, wasn't – and this is a word he can't get out of his head the last hour – _arrogant_. Dylan never claimed he had suffered enough. But he dared to hope the universe was done with him for the evening.

Like so many punishments, like the slow beginnings of so many creeping, terrible things, it comes disguised. This first strike comes to make him suffer from behind a pretty smile. It comes as a phone call.

Dylan won't, now or ever, divulge the name that appears on screen when she calls, but it hides Alma. You can see, maybe, why he doesn't immediately connect this event with the terrors that went before, the evening as it stood. How can this be punishment? Surely this is his reward for staying strong and surviving.

Then he answers it; even before she speaks he can hear the tension like static, like a bad line. "I'm being sent to Monte Carlo." She bites off every syllable sharp.

"It's okay," he tries to tell her. "Just learn the case on the flight down, do the interview like it was for real and then tell them Dasko was a dead-end, not what you thought-"

"No," Alma hisses. Slamming herself into some quiet side-room, "not the Puzo case. _You_. I'm being called in because of my history with the _Horsemen_ , Dylan. Tell me you're still in Italy."

"…By the time you get here, I will be."

She has other questions. He could answer, could talk her through some of it, how to lie on a case, how to get away with not lying. He could tell her what to do if either of them is caught, in theory at least – considering all their other theories on how to keep each other safe have been thrown out on this one, he's not sure how far he'd trust either of them to go to ground and keep their mouth shut. That, in fact, is what makes up his mind. Instead of telling her any of this, Dylan tells her he loves her. Then he cuts the call and blocks the number. This last might seem to protect him more than her, but he does it only hoping she'll take the hint and do the same.

She won't. No need for omniscience to know that; she won't.

In the moment it doesn't feel like punishment. He's only thinking of the message, that he needs to be out of the country in a matter of hours. That's something he already knew. Something he'd planned for. But as Dylan gets step-by-step farther from her voice, he knows better. That call was just the first sign that this night isn't done with him yet.

The second is less open to interpretation.

Approaching midnight, the sweeping front steps of the casino are casually littered with couples, ties hanging open and unbuttoned collars, wraps falling in swags from bare shoulders. Crystal clatters with laughter, muttering, arguments heated but hidden, heel clicks, music and money ringing out from inside. Amongst all this, he spots Evie. Whichever Evie, either Evie, any of them, hugging herself in someone else's too large coat, with a cigarette between her shaking fingers. She's like a hole in the world, a torn curtain showing through to something far away from all this ardently pursued pleasure. Dylan would go to her, except that she sees him coming and runs to him.

No stammer, no endless sentence; she stares up at him, lost, seeming to have no words at all. To prompt her, "What's happening?"

"I don't know." Her honesty is terrifying. "But there's no answer at Ms Valentine's room and my sister… I don't… She isn't-"

Because telling it is so distressing for her, he studies her for clues. At first he doesn't know what he is looking for. But it couldn't be any easier; her left hand mirrors his. Jammed hard in a pocket, clutching something which, when he pulls it out by the wrist, turns out to be a phone.

What she can't say, she can show him. Multiple unanswered messages to the other Evie, unanswered calls. Then, finally, a message from an unknown number stating simply, _Closet, third floor hall_. "I don't know who that is. I called it and called it but it's dead. Who has Evie's phone?" Eyes turned up to him, pleading and hating it, "I'm so sorry, but I can't go up there on my own."

There's no question. Dylan doesn't even know what she's apologizing for. He owes her this and so much more for getting him to Henley in time, and everything else she and her sister have done tonight. He even manages to stay in the moment, to come down out of his own thoughts and make some attempt at comfort.

There is _one_ moment where he gets a little distracted. Right before the elevator comes down for them, Dylan gets a text. There's just time to read it before the doors part. Time to read it, but no time to do anything about it. Forget that, for now. He'll come back to that.

He doesn't have to bruise his shoulder breaking the lock on the closet door. That's already done when they get there. The other Evie isn't locked in, just tucked away under a table out of sight, with a lump the size of an egg rising up purple out of her temple like some surfacing monster. That's all there is to see, right away. Her face is turned to the wall. It's only when her sister eases her out from under the table that her head rolls onto her shoulder and reveals the mess that's been made of her. The bruise is not Evie's only splash of colour.

Dylan freezes, then falls back a step, hands coming up defensive. He checks over his shoulder in case they're still lurking, waiting to corner him here.

It's what they do. They leave a mark. Not to make you one of them, just to show that they won and some part of you will always be theirs now. They don't leave scars, at least not on the surface, but they leave you with an image, the first thing you see in the mirror after they're gone, that you'll never get rid of. They don't scar but they _paint_. Evie's face was taken care of in a hurry; her own lipstick used to smear her mouth big on either side. There's neon blue, too, arching up above her natural brows. The curling ends are hasty and uneven.

Her sister, at the very least, doesn't laugh. That's something, isn't it? Whether she understands or not – and given she keeps asking him to explain, Dylan would say not – she at least appreciates the gravity of the situation. Her questions stay clear and cogent and complete, without falling into distressed echoes or half-formed thoughts.

He'd answer her if he could. She deserves it. Later he'll wonder again where Henley happened to find twins and will be far more suspicious than he was the first time. Maybe it wasn't such a stroke of luck after all, more likely a gift from the Eye. But that will all have to come later because his mind is occupied right now, all of it with one focus. He scans the tiny room, taking it apart until he finds a lockbox in a cabinet at the back. Here, finally, is a lock he has to break.

There isn't much you might find in a housekeeping closet that needs to be locked up. There's only one thing it might contain. When the lid pops, Dylan snatches out the master keycard without looking, already halfway out the door.

He runs to Henley's room. To hell with who might see him or what attention he might draw, Dylan runs, runs so fast he staggers trying to stop, runs even though he already knows what he'll find.

There are mints on the pillows. They're the third thing, the third punishment. The smile in his mind when the phone rang, the girl smoking on the casino steps, and the mints on the pillows. Henley's room is pristine. It's been made up as if there hasn't been a guest in days. Trash emptied, mirror polished, towels left fresh and neatly rolled in the bathroom. Not a trace of Henley or of Danny. And mints on the pillows. Dylan is in no mood to laugh but let's admit, amongst ourselves, it's not a bad joke.

He sits down on the end of the bed. This is far from the best decision he's made tonight, because he really can't envision himself getting up any time soon. Time may well be running out. Interpol are on their way. He ought to see to the twins, make sure the bruised Evie is okay and the unbruised one has stopped shaking. They came through for him earlier, so he owes them better than this. He also ought to prep them for the inevitable questions. Depending on how far Dasko decides to push her luck with the police, things are unlikely to stay comfortable for anyone who came here with Henley. He ought to try calling Danny. Even if he's been put beyond answering for himself, somebody might answer for him like it was with the twins. He could call that other hotel again, demand a phone be taken out to the private terrace, scream everything which is quietly coming to the boil at the base for his throat at those two freaks who held his attention while the whole world was swept away into darkness behind his back.

But they'll be gone already. Calling would only confirm what he already knows. He doesn't call Danny because, unlike with Evie who would have been found anyway, nobody's got any reason to tell Dylan anything.

Why would they, when the point of all of this could only have been to leave Dylan with nothing?

Assessing the events of the last hour – one hour, how much of the earth beneath you can crumble away in _an hour_ – what's left? Even his anger is gone, usually so reliably intrusive, usually unwanted, tonight when it might have at least got him up off the bed and gotten something done, it's gone.

Maybe you disagree. Maybe you want to tell him, in gentle tones or harsher, more judgemental ones, that he's got plenty. It's all back in Rome but that doesn't make it any less his or any less effective. Maybe you want to tell Dylan he's got the whole world still in his hands so long as he's got his people and the Eye and their skillsets. Discount Lula if you have to, leave her to recover, but even under those very worst of circumstances, you're still left with Jack and Merritt. Maybe you want to tell him to keep his chin up, or to stop whining. Dylan's got more than most.

But go back a little. There was a message, remember? Dylan read it down in the lobby. If he retraces his steps, that was the moment he gave up on planning ahead, gave up even thinking about the moment he's sitting in, which is why sitting is just about all he can do. His is a half-hearted kind of denial; unable to convince himself it isn't real, more than able to act as if he had.

The fourth thing is a message from Jack. Timestamped a couple of hours ago, maybe because of the change of network between countries, but that hardly seems to matter. It's not a message that expects a reply. There's no question, no plea for help. It says what it has to say simply and clearly without asking for anything at all.

 _Merritt got arrested_.


	33. Chapter 33

Jack doesn't know about the night Dylan's having.

Keep that in mind when you see him pacing the apartment floor, cursing under his breath. This is not the blind rage that took him over last night. That was just as powerful, but fragile. It shattered the second Quinn interrupted him. This has been building for hours. Slower to start, but stronger, like there was molten metal where his blood should be and just as hot. The look on his face pulls down taut through his neck, down each arm to gather and resolve, to show itself clearest in the flex of each balled-up fist. Look him in the eye and you might try to calm him. Take in the whole picture, you'll probably back away.

He's got no way of knowing everything that's happened in Monaco. It would be different if he did. That he was fourth on the list of problems to strike Dylan, and those all coming after what had already been a very intense twenty-four hours, Jack would care about that. He'd straighten up, crack the grinding tension out of his jaw, get on with it. His current rage would stop being a pointless frustration and become selfish.

It's not selfish right now. Right now things are bad in Rome. And like any good person with less than the usual dose of cynicism, anyone used to carrying an extra smile in their heart, Jack just can't conceive of anybody he cares about feeling the same way he does.

The isolation is the worst of it. Across the miles, it's the first and last thing Jack and Dylan agree on. Neither of them would wish it on even a hated enemy.

However – not that it's some sort of competition and no one wants to treat it as such, but if it were, and proof were to be presented – Jack's been suffering it longer. He lost Merritt hours ago.

It was a vanishing very much to be envied. One minute they were talking, idly, killing time. Then, somewhere in the space between sentences, he was leaving. He said he was just stepping out. But he said that with the door already closing behind him. And when Jack stopped to think about it – not long after and an awful lot since – what was in the bag over his shoulder?

 _Shouldn't have let him go_ , and it's not the first time that idea has started up echoing in the hollows where cogent thought has stalled out. _Shouldn't have let him go_ , or not without an explanation anyway, should have grabbed him back, shouldn't have let him slip away in the first place, should have been paying more attention, should have chased him down the stairs and dragged him back but the stairs were what stopped him. Jack got no farther than the landing.

One step out the door was too much. He couldn't feel her anymore.

It's like losing her. Any time he can't hear her breathing, can't watch out for the uneasy shudders in her shoulders, gets too far away to feel her warmth, Lula's gone. He can't stand it. They came too close to that already.

So yes, he's sorry he let Merritt go, but he's not sorry he stayed. It's not even a paradox. A paradox would frustrate him, but this isn't that. It would only be a paradox if he'd done it for anyone but Lula.

She is where he tries to go when he stops waiting for Dylan to answer him and breaks from his pacing.

She's still curled up where she slept. More than once they tried to move her back to bed but even waking her is near impossible. 'Wake' might not even be the right word. What holds Lula isn't so restful as sleep would be. It doesn't remove her from the world around her. Jack can tell, by her smallest twitches, by the way her breathing shifts, she still knows when he's close. Really he's grateful. Even though she might relax if she slept again, the shivering tension might go out of her, she'd stop hunching her shoulders every time there's some unaccounted-for sound, he's grateful. It was worse when she slept. There was fire in the dark and she'd wake up seized and breathless.

He gets close enough to the back of the couch to see over. Just the edges of her; the soft curve of a hip, the bunched-up shoulders, ends and waves of tousled hair. That's where his feet stop. He thought there was nothing in the world he wanted more than to stay close and to make her better. Standing there, trapped like there's glass between them, he realizes he was wrong about that. He wants more to find out who made her this way in the first place. His next step takes him backward, farther from her. With new purpose and as little noise as he can make, he moves around the apartment gathering those few things he needs so he can leave.

This is something else you shouldn't judge him for. The reasons are the same as the ones we have already discussed. He's alone and he doesn't see how it could be any worse for anyone elsewhere.

But you've got a new argument against him this time, don't you? Didn't Lula tell him to stay? Those smallest hours of the morning when she crept up on him that was her only concern. Maybe they were able to skip the argument it might have become, but only because she was spent. Jack is under no illusions that he's off the hook. She told him to stay, and that he was wrong to leave her at all. It's a very strong argument. In the absence of a pack of rabid dogs waiting outside the door, it's probably the strongest one you could have.

But you can scream at him all you want, you can reach out to strangle him, you can nail his feet to the floor, you won't get rid of the feeling in him that this has to be done.

Things are different now to how they were last night. Last night there was Dylan to rely on. Now Dylan's not just out of contact, he's out of the country; even if he did pick up, what help could he possibly offer? Not to mention, attempted murder, Lula nearly _burning_ to death, that was obviously less important to him than whatever great big secret Danny was rushing off to protect.

And what about Merritt? Merritt says he's just stepping out for a second and two hours later, he makes Jack his one-phone-call. And what a call it was; there's an art to talking to someone for a full minute and not only telling them _nothing_ of value, but not allowing them to speak a single word.

The very last thing he said? _Stop worrying._ _Everything's going to be fine_.

In short, Jack has been left with nothing but the knowledge that no one is going to help him now. Anything that happens will do so because of him. So you see, staying here isn't an option anymore. Any argument to the contrary has been rendered invalid by the fact that Jack is now all there is. He's got no choice _but_ to act.

Do you get it? Now that we're discussing the point, do you still hold it against him?

If the answer is no, do Jack a favour and explain it back, just so he doesn't feel quite so much like throwing himself off the balcony. He stands at the table by the door, leaning over a notebook. At the top of the page he has only managed to write her first initial. Underneath it, nothing. Not a word.

"If I'd gotten up-" Lula's voice comes from nowhere. The pen cuts the page, Jack flinches so hard. "-And you were gone, and there was a note, I'm not kidding, I would have _one-hundred-percent_ scratched your eyes out."

Catching his breath, "How do you do that?"

"We're talking empty pink sockets, man. No jury in the world would convict me."

"That's the second time you've done that."

The second time she's crept up on him, the second time she's dropped her head on his shoulder and it's as if she appeared out of nowhere. Like any time he starts to really believe he's alone in the world, when her weight and warmth become necessary, she's summoned like a saint to intercede. He looks up into the mirror on the wall and finds her by his side. Only the blanket pulled close around her shoulders says she's slept at all, never mind for most of a day. Her eyes are wide and bright, perfectly alert. Her threat, too, sparkles. The sentiment behind it is real, but she's kidding. She tries to hide a smile and ends up smiling all the wider. And Jack, who wanted this more than almost anything, who could scarcely admit to himself how deeply he wanted it, is beguiled, and smiles back.

Lula reaches past him and rips that top sheet off the pad. "Where are you going?"

"Nowhere." His hand fighting its way under the blanket, looking for her waist to bring her even closer, "Forget it. It was a dumb idea. I'm staying here."

Without a step, with only the slightest tightening, she pulls away. One fingertip traces the imprinted L scratched into the notebook. "No. It's important or you never would have even tried. It's just the note thing I don't like. I'm up now. Tell me." Maybe bright is the wrong word for what's in her eyes. Maybe she's not really smiling at all. That particular expression has remained fixed right up until this very second, when she seems to sense how closely he's considering her. In explanation, and her voice is softer now, "I felt Merritt disappear. It was his voice more than anything. It was like I'd made myself very small and far away, but I could still hear him out in the distance. Even when it stopped, I guess it took me a while to notice. And when I noticed, it took me even longer to worry. I don't mean that in a bad way just that I… But I knew you were still around even if you weren't talking. And just a minute ago there, I felt you disappear from me too. And you weren't there anymore. So just tell me."

He tries again to work his arm around her. This time it's not about intimacy or nearness; he wants to guide her back to the couch, maybe to bed now that she's on her feet. Though Lula isn't swaying or stumbling, Jack still feels like she's not quite steady. Again, she flinches, this time harder, and snaps out of the soft-toned reverie. She's been idly chewing her thumb nail. Now she stops on a heartbeat and her hands flash, fast. She snatches his jacket from his hand and, with or without his cooperation, helps him into it.

Chipper and chirping again, "Tell me."

"Those clowns, they're the only ones that saw what happened to you. They said last night they'd come find me but… But it's a dumb idea. I don't even know where to start looking."

She laughs, one sharp bark that could be bitter or bright. If there were more of it, he'd know but she just fixes his zipper and mumbles, "Two clowns get arrested right after global-broadcast guerrilla magic and you don't know where to start? Pretty sure _somebody_ noticed them." He opens his mouth to argue again, tries to stop her hands, but she bypasses both, "Tell me where Merritt went, too."

Tell her he went to the same holding cell the clowns probably spent last night in, that he never even explained why, that he's gone and Jack can't account for him? Tell her he's got the sneaking suspicion that _somebody_ is making a play, but he couldn't say who? Tell her that, if he's wrong, they could be losing Merritt forever? Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow, but definitely not tonight.

Tonight he takes her by the wrists. Under his fingertips, her pulse flashes huge, like siren lights. "Stop worrying," he says. "Everything's going to be fine. Merritt is… _working_ on something, him and Danny, maybe Dylan, I don't know. Something is happening, yeah, but it's not about you and that's the only thing that concerns me right now, so-"

Her lips stop his. Just one kiss but fierce, heartfelt, and when they break apart they're still so close he can feel her lashes brush his cheek when she blinks.

By her ear, barely breathing the words, "I don't ever want to be that scared again. I know I shouldn't say that to you because you got a thousand times worse but I don't. I have to do something, Lula, and if they know anything that might help…"

"I agree." Only part of his silent stare is disbelief. The rest is looking for the lies, for the cracks starting to show, still half-expecting her to slump against him any second. But Lula never falters. She keeps hold of his jacket just tight enough and just long enough to tell him she doesn't want to let him go, then lets go anyway. "I really do, I agree. Not least because you owe those clowns a sizeable apology for your behaviour last night."

"I knew you'd say something like that."

" _And_ if you're back by the time I get out of the tub, I won't hold it against you. I won't even use it in arguments."

"Alright," and Jack steps closer. This time when he wraps his arms around her she allows it. "It's a deal." She lies against him, his chin on top of her head, except when he turns his face down to kiss that same spot. They stay that way a lot longer than either intended. In the end she shoves him off, _demands_ that he go. Back and forth, one limp hand slapping his chest, until he steps away and it's just shooing him.

Then he's gone, and it's not doing anything.


	34. Chapter 34

With the exception of certain children's entertainers in the sort of rich suburban enclaves where parental competitiveness has reached Olympic levels, it is unusual for a specific clown to find themselves what may be termed 'sought-after'. This is especially true of vocational clowns, those full-timers who think of their greasepaint as something more than preparation for little Billy's birthday party. More than that, these consummate professionals will generally find themselves avoided, feared. They'll find people crossing the street so as not to brush past them. After dark can be an especially lonely and disheartening time. Like King and coulrophobe, Gacy is another dirty word amongst them.

But for Petey and Quinn, still wandering Rome when it's more respectable bars are closing, night has not quite fallen and their spirits not at all. For them, this has been a much better day than it had any right to be. After last night, all fire, confusion and violence, they talked about taking it easy. Talked, and dismissed; that's just too much like admitting defeat. Taking it easy would be like saying it got to them, that they were shaken by it.

Nothing, but _nothing_ , brings a true clown down.

And besides, it wouldn't have cheered Petey up any, just sitting around. This Horseman business has been tough on him. First McKinney, then Wilder, the favourites are falling away like statues crumbling. Though he may be moving on again already – Quinn _did_ catch him Googling Lula May over breakfast – the greater part of a great partnership is taking care of each other.

He's singing now, as they meander half-dancing back to the hotel, something he rarely feels confident enough to do in public. Given his profession, self-doubt might seem like a paradox, but anybody listening to the formless, mushy wail with which he echoes Quinn's every line of _On Moonlight Bay_ soon stops questioning it. Petey himself doesn't seem to care tonight, and when it sees the grin restored to his face, Quinn considers that it has done good work today.

First thing this morning… Well, first thing this morning they were asleep, having been up half the night between the police station and eventually finding a pizzeria still open. First thing this afternoon, though… First thing this afternoon they had a long and very large breakfast and put on their very best faces, their whitest gloves. By the time Petey scrubbed a new hole in the toe of one sneaker and Quinn had removed every possible trace of traditional gender from its reflection, time was wearing on. But _then_ they tried to visit Wilder. There isn't much to tell him – Petey heard a voice under the stage, and _swears_ he's heard it before, but he can't put a name to it. It's not much, and nothing useful. Still, they tried. After all, they made a promise.

As of tonight, however, it remains unfulfilled. They knew they'd find him somewhere around the piazza, knew the backstreet behind the trattoria where Quinn ended up when it stowed away. They also knew a few of the police still lingering, questioning store-owners and passers-by. They knew one of them very well. Quinn's still got the marks on its bony wrists from how tight she put the cuffs on. Sadly, she remembered them too, and upon catching sight of them through the crowd, forced them very quickly to abandon that plan.

Quite how they ended up at the Coliseum is a little foggy. What is clear is that it happened with the sort of speed and organic ease they never argue with. It happened almost without their input, like fate might have grabbed them by their collars and dragged them if they'd tried to fight. In short, it happened.

By contrast, the conga line around the lower arches was very much a conscious thing. Nothing makes a clown happier than to get the normal folk to join in, and nothing is easier to get the normal folk to join than a conga line. There was no effort involved. They began it themselves and just grabbed anybody who was laughing when they passed. At its longest, with Petey at the head and Quinn at the back, they actually lost sight of each other.

They were stopped, in the end, by high-visibility vests. Like their own accustomed costumes, Quinn finds it doesn't really see the person _wearing_ a high-visibility vest anymore. It just sees the overkill jacket itself and everything it stands for – security, health-and-safety, killjoy. Cops, you can argue with. Vicious idiots with follicle counts lower than their abysmal IQs, you can out-crazy. A high-visibility vest is unequivocal. A high-visibility vest has no sense of humour. You see that neon yellow and it's over.

Still, it was no great loss. They were ready by then. Back on form, on top of the game, assured that they had left their smiles replicating viral behind them. And now, reaching the end of their song to sparks of applause scattered around the street, their usual peace is restored.

Quinn feels barely a tremor when Petey tucks his ukulele under his arm and tells it, _Someone following us_.

"For real? You see who?" He shakes his head. "Feel it?"

 _Five minutes now_.

"Hug me."

He slings one arm around its shoulders and folds it in. Quinn steps up on his feet so they can keep moving and, forgetting itself for a second, sighs exhausted against his chest. "This is nice. Why do I have to ask for this? Why, after everything I have done for you in the last twenty-four hours, do we have to be getting stalked for you to hug me, please?" He jolts it, one hand on the back of its neck shoving it to the side. From there it can look out from under his arm, scanning the crowd behind them.

Then it squeals, yanks free and goes pounding up the pavement the way they came. It seems their stalker is no random stranger, but one of their own. "Cap!" it cries, with the high-pitched fervour of a child at Christmas. "Cap-Cap-Cap! Petey, c'mon, it's the Captain! Why didn't you holler at us, chief?"

"I wanted to let you finish that lovely song."

Petey hangs back. Ask him and he couldn't tell you why. In their odd, patchwork family, the Captain has always been a favourite uncle for both of them. This old circus-traditional is an aspiration; his act is experienced and polished without ever getting old, his look – the captain's hat, outsized gold jewellery and gold-topped cane, old English charm oozing the slightest sleaze at the edges – has never gotten tired. A smart, wise clown, he's been with the organization a lot longer than Petey or Quinn.

He is part of the architecture of their world. They trust him the way you trust walls to hold up a ceiling. Tonight, however, Petey hesitates.

Quinn doesn't. Still shrieking it runs into waiting arms, is picked up and shook about giggling with delight. When Cap puts it back down on its feet, he holds out a hand, flat at the crown of Quinn's head. "Now, didn't I tell you about getting shorter?"

"I'm _not_ shorter!"

"You get shorter every time I see you. One day you'll just pack up like a telescope and vanish into your shoes."

"Petey, tell him!"

Quinn spins, throwing up its arms and throwing all attention Petey's way. No avoiding it anymore, no more hesitating. Cap approaches and he might not be smiling; his classic red muzzle makes it hard to tell what his real mouth is doing. He comes with one hand stuck out in front, to be shaken if Petey can fold his fingers around the stacked rings, all lethal with cheap and ill-cut jewels. "Why, hello!", not quite laughing, "My, my, Mighty Whitey! How long has it been?"

That's when Petey makes a decision. He uses the outstretched hand to grab Cap into a hug.

Then, with both hands behind him where only Quinn can see, _That's the voice, this voice, last night, this voice_.

Quinn shakes its head, brow furrowed. _No way – that's the Captain!_

But the frantic hands insist. They keep insisting. At the first taste of doubt, Quinn stifles a gasp with one hand. At the second, it uncovers its mouth to mime, _For real?_

With one finger, Petey taps his temple, then points from his lips to Quinn, _For real for sure_.

This is too much movement; Cap notices something, begins to lean back. Before he can think too hard about it, Quinn snaps into action. It grabs him by the shoulder, yanking him hard away from Petey and his suspicions. The yelling is just more distraction; "It's always the same when we meet you, Petey gets all the attention. And it'll get even worse when Columbina shows up! Hey, where is Foxy Clown anyway?"

A long, blasting laugh like a foghorn, " _Foxy Clown_! Oh, my dear, very good, you ought to tell her that one."

"Well, I will when I see her, but-"

"The divine Miss Collie and I had a terrible lot to get done in not a lot of time."

Quinn and Petey both gasp, jump to each other, clinging together. "You don't mean?!" Quinn cries. Then it buries its face against Petey's shoulder, the picture of cataclysm, as if it's sky were falling, and whispers in his ear, "On his own, he can only catch one of us. Worst comes, run. Warn Wilder."

Petey pats the small of its back; no language but just as powerful a sign, that the plan is understood and agreed.

In fact it's not a plan Petey likes that much. The idea of being separated, one not knowing what's become of the other, makes his heart race. But it is solid, it is the only plan they have, and more to the point, agreeing is the least he can do. When Quinn has switched, on nothing more than his word, from childlike adoration to preparing for the worst, he owes it equal belief.

In the meantime, Cap has laughed so hard at their display that he stops now to smooth out his fine, sculpted moustache, to twirl the ends of it over a pudgy fingertip, "Clingy as twins, you two! You'll learn. You have to split up for a bit, to make it all the sweeter when you meet again. But to return to your point, my little, little, _little_ -"

"Watch it, _mon capitan_ …"

" _Little_ friend, our great _big_ friend gets all the attention because…" Cap steps up close, edging between them. With the tips of two fingers he rubs a little of the white paint from the end of Petey's cheekbone, making him wince, since underneath is still so swollen and bruised. "Because he's the one with the nasty shiner. Now tell me, laddie, how'd you come by that?"

This is all wrong. Nothing has been _right_ in this conversation but this question, especially, is wrong. To have even known they were in Rome, to find them in the first place, Cap must have talked to Mom or, more likely, Dad. In which case, he already knows exactly what went down last night. Why ask?

Petey begins to explain anyway, the faster, more complex finger-spelling requiring Quinn for a translator. "Jack Wilder thought I was someone else."

"Hit you, did he? Whyever didn't you hit him back?"

Quinn doesn't even bother reading the more hesitant answer. "Because he's too goddamn Hufflepuff to ever hit anybody." Two pairs of eyes roll at it. Quinn shrugs. "True facts."

They might have found more to say to each other, except that at this precise moment, Petey turns to face the wall, hiding his face behind one hand. Quinn looks briefly for what might have spooked him, then tugs down the peak of its cap, pulls its hood up tighter. Cap is last to look across the street. Seeing a strolling policeman, he only twitches a smile. "Mmh… Heard there was a little brush with the law last night."

"These things happen," Quinn mutters. It winds its arm through the Captain's and starts them off at an easy pace along the street. He allows himself to be taken, almost as if there was a game afoot. Maybe to him, it is. Maybe he can hear the clockwork whirring inside Quinn's skull. It can feel his wry smile still in place, feel his eyes in the side of its head. It's nothing like someone laughing because you're funny. It's the kind of laughing that makes Quinn's blood boil. So why give him the satisfaction? Quinn rolls a crackle out of its neck and, with casual courage and its hanging hand reaching back to squeeze Petey's, "Oh-Captain-my-Captain?"

"Mmh?"

"What brings you to Rome? If you and Collie have so much to do you have to be in two places at once, what's your part?"

"Ah. Well, I had rather hoped you two might help with that. Trying to find this Wilder, you see, this violent young man that took after our dear Pedrolino. Had thought you two might know where to look."

"Why would you think that? We got arrested before we could follow him."

"Oh, but there must have been some arrangement made. How did you know about their little trick show to begin with?"

"Just lucky, I guess. Petey remembered that building collapse being in the news way back, thought it seemed like their thing. We were just in the square getting gelato, we didn't really expect to be right." The Captain doesn't believe it. His aggravation is palpable, changes the air around them, giving everything a fiberglass scratch. Along with it come disappointment, disgust, distaste, that a fellow clown would lie to a superior and for what?

For what? It's actually not a bad question. Quinn ends up pretty sorry it arrived at it, because it doesn't have an answer. But before the question came along, instinct was to lie. Instinct was to protect the Horsemen. Questioning instinct does not change it. Before the Captain can really turn on it, Quinn throws itself back into its dance with fresh energy. "Look, all I'm saying, if Jack Wilder wants to see us again, _he_ would have to come to _us_."

"Then perhaps we'd better see where you're quartered, hm?"

"Slight problem with that. We're actually between hotels? I mean, we got dropped off at four a.m. in a cop car, full faces on, and Petey was bleeding, so they sort of… _politely_ asked us to check out this mor…" Quinn trails away, because the Captain is holding up a key. It pats down its pockets just to be certain, but the tacky plastic fob with the traces of white where the engraved number was once filled with correcting fluid is unmistakable. "I mean, we got a new place real quick, but I don't see how Wilder could have found that, not even the cops had that address but okay, if you really want to, fine, let's go where we're staying, that's cool, I need to get ice back on the big guy's bruises anyway so yeah, fine, cool. He ain't gonna be there, though. He ain't. I know he ain't…"


	35. Chapter 35

Those clowns make a strange trio, crossing the capital by its unceasing night time flicker. Petey and Quinn together have a way of complementing each other, but the addition of the Captain makes them mismatched and bizarre. Then there's the tension; combined with their professional obligation to maintain energy and buzz, to stay funny, their agitated state makes them very strange indeed. You could watch the games they play. The Captain never once breaks stride in his slimy, exaggerated stroll, whatever hyperactive dances Quinn might cut in front of him, never slows even with Petey hanging on his shoulder. There are twitchy, twisting conversations that the dear and affectionate pair we know better try to lead astray, away, anywhere that isn't the Horsemen, only to find themselves dragged magnetic back to their beginning. You could pay careful attention, edge of seat, heart in mouth, you could suffer the same suspense that suffocates them, rendered pleasurable by the fact that for you there are no real consequences, nothing to really fear.

You could, but we have to leave them.

First and foremost, what suspense? There really ought not be a question over whether or not they'll find Wilder in their hotel room. Have a little faith in your heroes. Therefore, knowing the outcome, there's no dread. And with nothing to chew your nails over, it could only be painful to watch Petey and Quinn hanging onto the half-hearted hope that where they're staying has remained a secret. You'd only spend the whole time asking yourself what will happen when they get there, trying to gauge the depth of the danger they're in. That would be murder.

Let's not put you through that. Let's not lead you to a foregone conclusion. Not, anyway, when there are real mysteries as yet unexplained.

By way of for-instance, what do we actually know about the arrest of Merritt McKinney?

The man himself can tell us nothing. His single phone call is all used up. And don't ask him to talk his way into another one; it was hard enough to get the first. Under normal circumstances it wouldn't be a problem. Then again, under normal circumstances, Merritt never would have been arrested. The right words, the right timing, it is not beyond his skills to have the cops handcuffing each other instead of him. But speaking accented and colloquial English in a room full of formally-taught Italians who may not have spoken their second tongue since they left school, he had a little trouble making himself understood. You have to assume that such advanced topics as legal rights and process are not covered on speed-learning CDs.

No, we can get no more word from the police station than Jack did. _Stop worrying,_ was how that went. _Everything's going to be fine_. Are those words of honest reassurance or just empty comfort – the sort of things you say to a scared friend whether they're true or not? Jack, by his actions, has made it very clear what he thinks. But you should form your own opinion.

The next obvious source of information would be Dylan. Quite apart from all his more mysterious ways and means, the arrest of any of the Horsemen would trigger a screaming red alarm at Interpol. It's all very well to have your own channels and the support of very large and secretive organization, but there's very little that can beat a well-situated woman of incredible personal strength and a frankly baffling determination to watch your back.

Of course, you can beat her if you block her number. If you're really staunch in your decision to protect her by staying out of touch, you can beat her.

So there's no help from Merritt, and none from Dylan. Jack knows no more than he was told, which is precisely nothing. Danny's unconscious, Henley beat him there. Lula was hardly aware Merritt was gone. Even Rebecca Dasko, a long shot at best, was in a holding cell of her own at the time.

There's really only one other person you could ask. _Should_ ask, in fact; you're talking about a man potentially going to prison and you haven't so much as considered the person who put him there. That should have been your _first_ step, your logical choice, your first port of call.

But – and this is a very sad fact for any man to find his life defined by, but no less true for that – Chase McKinney is rarely anybody's first port of call.

He couldn't tell you why this is. Boundless confidence prevents him finding any reason people might avoid him, but they do. They'll call up the devil and talk to _him_ before they'll ask Chase even the simplest question. One could get terribly offended, if one were so inclined. Lucky for Chase, he's not. Offence wastes energy. It turns your karma bad. More to the point, for other people's opinions to offend you, you have to _care_ about said opinions. That last one is where he really hits a wall. So far as Chase is concerned, the good people of this world can feel free to ignore him. He's really got very little time for _good_ people anyway.

But now that you're desperate and you're ready to talk, ask away. Come on ahead. Anything you want to know. He's of a mood to be generous, and _maybe_ even honest. It's been that good of a day.

The younger of the McKinney brothers – seven minutes is seven minutes – has now been in Rome a couple of days. The second he found out about that bogus TV interview it was a brief meeting with the parole officer and then _ciao_ to the Home of the Brave with a minimum of fuss. They're probably all snapped out of it by now, all those sleepers he put under and programmed along the way, but who worries anymore? Positive mental attitude is all the rage these days. Distinctly old-fashioned, he finds, to give over any speck of brain-space to anything that might be considered a negative consequence.

Fun fact; he actually caught last night's performance. If you know where to look and who to talk to – how to make them talk back if they decide to be a donkey about it – then it wasn't all that difficult to find out that something was going on. All that preparation, that activity, the right people notice. And when you've got the inside line, like Chase did, that the Horsemen were in it somewhere, it all fell into place easy enough.

Not one of those involved knows it, but the Chase Lula May spotted in the crowd, the one Dylan told her could only be the disguised Meritt? That, in fact, was the real deal.

Had he found them earlier, Chase might have been able to have a little fun. As it was, he got stuck watching the show. Now, he's not one to complain; there's always a little joy to be gleaned from praying somebody screws up or maybe even breaks an ankle. It just wasn't what he came for. And Chase is nothing if not patient. After all, how long do you think it takes to set up your own absolute disappearance to coincide with the sudden conclusion of a long-term embezzlement scheme that leaves a fellow human being, albeit an ungrateful, inarticulate, self-righteous slob of a human being, mere steps from bankruptcy? He withdrew into the dark and waited for a better moment.

Truth be told, he was surprised when that moment walked up and sat next to him as he enjoyed a nice dinner and an impromptu selfie with two young locals. They were unaware that the Chase they saw on TV was a facsimile. And with one either side of him, a fashionably minute waist wrapped up in either arm, he did not see fit to disillusion them. But that, all of it, girls and all, was flung to one side with the arrival of his brother.

Now, what exactly passed between the twins thereafter, that's one secret Chase intends to keep. Let him have something. Really, let him have it; to persist in pressing and questioning will only increase his pleasure in keeping it from you.

We only know that, just over two hours later, Merritt passed too close by a police officer more awake than he was.

Was it a mistake? Long days, high stress, too little sleep, and he screwed up? Was it just one of those unfortunate things? There are coincidences, fates, that no one can really be considered in control of. A second's accidental eye contact with a stranger in a crowd who turns out to be wearing a uniform, that's all it would have taken. It is highly likely that the answer is as simple as that. But, given the two people under discussion, you have to ask yourself if there wasn't more to it. For Merritt to be out, undisguised, and by then he had wandered very far from anywhere known to be safe, does that sound right? It's unfair to ask for a definite answer when none of the facts are definite, but these are the questions you should be bearing in mind.

At any rate, it happened. How and why aren't all that important, and especially not to Chase. Chase watched the arrest go down in silence and from a respectful distance. Then he dusted off his hands, pulled a stray cut hair from his cuff, and went on about the night's other business. You ought to see him; his cool remove is admirable. To any who know him at all, it would be considered downright strange.

He clears his throat as he picks up Merritt's cell phone. There's something tentative about the way his dancing fingers play out the speed-dial tones on the air, as if the prissy little flutter were unfamiliar. He grows accustomed to it fast, though, and to the width of his slim slice of a smile, the way it stretches his voice. Every word oozes saliva-like at the corners of his lips. It moistens the lines of communication, keeps everything sleek and slippery and sliding his way. You can watch it skittering across the skin of whatever poor soul he chooses to speak with, sometimes.

The line connects, the answer coming desperate and needy and quick. "Merritt, thank _God_. Tell me it's not true."

"That what's not true, Mr Shrike?"

The silence that follows is very, very special. Chase is loath to ruin it, but the giggle bubbles up at the back of his throat and it won't be choked. He struggles with it until it crackles up from him in little sparks. And if there had been rage in the quiet, it's nothing compared to the soft danger of Dylan Shrike down the line, "What did you do?"

"Do? Me? What did _I_ do?"

"Yes, you. Chase. What did _you_ do?"

"Well, that's just charming. I'll have you know I didn't do a thing. It's always been this way, though, I think I must have one of those faces, something goes wrong and it's just plain bad luck, but we all turn to poor little Chasey-wasey and-"

"If you're not responsible then why are you calling me?"

"Another terrible conclusion to draw. What must you think of me? And who says, oh brave and fearless leader of my brother's, that I'm not helping out? Who's to say this isn't an act of brotherly compassion? I'm calling because I'm _worried_ , and I know Mer-Bear would be _very_ worried. You only just arrived in Monte Carlo and you're already _leaving_? Where're you headed, big boss man? Back here to Roma?"

But something is wrong. There shouldn't have been time for all those teasing questions. If the truth were going to be told it should have been told at the first, and if there were going to be some cover-up, the first ought never to have reached its punctuation. Chase is a little perplexed. He even double-checks his facts. The length of Dylan's pause means he feels the need to, as well as having time.

See, however he came into possession of it, Merritt's phone is running a little tracker. Kind of cute, the way these brothers-in-arms all latch on to each other. It has been keeping a watchful eye on that smug little hollow-initial known as _Atlas_. Personally Chase can't stand the kid, but that's what he's got to work with, and work he will.

When the two devices last checked in with each other, Atlas was on the move. "Maybe an hour out?" Chase wheedles. "Already back over the border? Round about Albenga, maybe?"

What follows comes sharp and dark. "You got me." Too terse, too dispassionate – it can't possibly be true. For one thing, Shrike would never admit as much, and certainly not to Chase McKinney. "Congratulations, Chase, you nailed it. Now, we'll be passing through Genoa, the old port, first thing in the morning. You want your shot? Come and take it."


	36. Chapter 36

Lula was right. She generally is. Not everybody believes Jack at first when he says that. He'll usually have to admit, make some concession, most of what she says is speed-talking, designed to amuse or to comfort herself and those around her. It's one-hundred-percent true, too. She could do that professionally, make a career of it, probably be considered one of the best in the world. But when Lula stops? When she actually _chooses_ to offer advice, and _chooses_ the words to phrase it? Then she's generally right.

Like when she told him intercontinental larceny was no basis for a relationship and they might have to skip back a step or two and do the dating thing, that has worked out for them. And when she corrected his French, from _je suis chaud_ to _j'ai chaud_ , again, she was right. It explained some of the nasty looks he'd been getting too.

She was right when she told him he shouldn't have much difficulty finding Petey and Quinn. He had to go no farther than the ground floor of the palazzo for that information. One of the friendlies in the trattoria was even then telling the story of the bizarre arrest he'd witnessed on his way home last night. It didn't cost much more than a slice of pizza to have him point out one of the police officers he saw involved, and not much more than the bread to go with it to have him walk up to the man and keep him talking.

It was a very old-fashioned pull; the cop's notebook was in a holder at the back of his belt. Flip open the snap on approach, slide the little book free on the pass. You're never right behind the man you're robbing. He can always see you over one shoulder or the other, and doesn't believe you could be picking his pocket. Too easy, almost, way beneath Jack's skillset. He's found it to be that easy with law enforcement all over the world. Something complacent about them, maybe, something that makes them think the law will protect them, even as they watch it fail to protect other people every day. He's really never felt all that bad about stealing from cops, and could tell you cheerfully about this one time he and a small group of like-minded souls emptied the trays at a doughnut shop right before opening and…

And he's supposed to be better than that, these days, really ought to stop telling that story, supposed to have moved on, not supposed to be proud of his pulls anymore, or the lifts, the B-and-Es…

Giving a strictly professional account, it was not difficult to get the notebook and not difficult to find last night's hasty, urgent notes. And, given that Italian is one more language where the word for 'clown' is all too familiar, it wasn't difficult to get the hotel address they gave.

Which brings Jack safely back to the perfectly legal point he was making, Lula was right when she said it would not be difficult.

Whether or not she was right when she told him to go remains to be seen.

He's been sitting on the windowsill of their hotel room for the past twenty minutes. That was actually another great piece of work – the side of this building looks _flat_ , to the untrained eye. Really, if you've never had to climb, you'd never find a way to climb it. And even if you did, to raise the old-fashioned sash window from outside, you have to know what you're doing. Maybe, _maybe_ , you could describe how to do it to a smart and willing pupil, but for Jack's money, experience is the only teacher worth a damn. Consider especially that his right hand is still stiff and aching, still won't open or close entirely. Consider all of this and tell him he didn't do a really great job… A great job of breaking and entering…

That's when he calls her.

"I'm just waiting so I thought I'd check in, see how you-"

"Uh-huh. What'd you do?" He can hear clanking pipes, water pounding into the tub, hissing steam. And he can hear too that she expected this – something else for her to be right about.

He sighs, "Picked a cop's pocket and snuck into another hotel room?"

"And?"

"…And… And nothing, that's it."

"That's it? _That's_ it? _Wah, I used a skill I have to do what we needed to get done, oh, I'm so guilty, wah!_ "

"Lula, come on…"

"What? You are in a clown's hotel room and you can't think of anything more interesting to talk about? Disappointing, Wilder, not going to lie, _massively_ disappointing."

Games. It's the same principle as distracting a kid who's getting their shots. Play games until the painful part has passed. At best they never know it happened, at worst they've forgotten within minutes. It doesn't always work. Depending on his mood, and how deep the guilt has gotten before she tries it, sometimes it offends him. But tonight she's doing it for herself as much as him. And, if he's totally honest, he'd been about to start sending her pictures anyway. His restraint lasts a millisecond longer before he snaps, "Lula, there are three rubber chickens tucked into the bed, like it's the three bears or something, and there's an eyebrow comb covered in blue dye next to the bathroom sink, and I'm pretty sure if I open the bedside drawer a bunch of those joke snakes would jump out at me."

"Do it!"

"No, I feel bad enough being h-"

"Do it now, do it while I'm on the phone, or I'm not going to believe you. They wouldn't have put them there if they weren't hoping somebody would, so you have to do it."

So he opens the drawer. No snakes, but a jester jack-in-the-box with a cruel grin and a handstitched look to its bobbing head. Jack tries not to so much as touch it while he's putting it away again. Then, at her request, he checks the closet and finds several costume changes – matching tuxedos, for instance, differentiated only by their patterned, whirling bowties. Bert-and-Ernie striped shirts. The Chinese robe that allowed them to hide at the busiest tourist spot on the planet. And Jack feels better. Nothing has changed, and he hasn't forgotten the route he took getting here, but he feels better. What clears a dark cloud from your mind better than having someone tell you they couldn't care less? What Jack thinks of as transgressions are too minor to even register with Lula, especially once he tells her there's an equipment case in the corner by the window.

"Open it."

"No. No, I'm drawing the line, the other stuff was all visible, I'm not going through their stuff."

"You're supposed to be here taking care of me."

"Thought you weren't holding that against me?"

"Well, I won't, if you-" He loses her for a second, distracted by the sound of footsteps out in the hall. Other people have passed before now, but alone, or if in a group then only talking in that half-scared mumble you associate with the corridors of half-star hostels by Termini station. These steps now come stomping in heavy boots, every tread creaking in terror that they might go crashing straight through. That's just one set, there are others following behind, drowned out and indistinct. Above all of it, a voice lifted up loud. For just a moment, Jack listens to that instead of Lula. Then switches back. Though he moves quicker and more sharply, he makes sure she doesn't hear the slightest change. Certainly she hasn't noticed up until now, "-probably just juggling clubs and stuff like that but we will never know if-"

"Even if I _would_ have done it, I can't. I think they're coming."

Lula gasps. Then, hushed as if she were in the room and edging away behind a curtain, "Okay, bye, call me right after, bye, by-"

The sound of the key in the lock cuts her off. It slides in okay, but rattles and scratches instead of turning. Then, the loud voice again, the one that belongs to the little clown who _would_ , Jack is certain, have broken his arm if it had to, "Hang on a second, there's a knack to this."

When Jack heard it before, that voice was trying to warn him. It was announcing, for the whole hotel to hear, "Cap, I'd tell you you're barking up the wrong tree, but I feel like you're in the whole wrong forest. Even if he knew we were here, Wilder wouldn't come and be waiting. That's _crazy_. Now, if you were hanging on to _his_ arm right now and expecting to find me and Petey, well, okay, because _we're_ crazy, but Wilder ain't crazy, and this is crazy, so I really think you've got it backward, chief."

Now it's faking a titanic struggle with the key, giving Jack just enough time to weigh his options.

Really, he's only got the two. One is the window again. He could slip back out and climb in either direction for a complete escape. He can't close the sash behind him, though. If that attracts attention, and whoever this Cap may be decides to look, he'll be spotted easily on the sheer face of the building. There is also the very real risk of being spotted from the street. But he could still get away.

His second option is the bathroom door. This option does little more than close him inside a tiny box with paper thin walls and a noisy tile floor with no windows, no exit and his chance of a clean getaway narrowed to zero. But he still needs those clowns, and what they know.

Quite apart from that, that voice at the door is still rattling commentary, "What do you expect in a fleapit like this? Here, big guy, you got it open earlier, you try it." Every word trembles. From the way the key slips in a new hand, Petey is shaking too.

Jack shuts the window and closes himself behind the bathroom door.

He jumps, and Petey and Quinn both cry out, when Cap gets tired of waiting and thumps the door hard. "Even in my day," he declares, a rich old voice that makes Jack think of nothing so much as the guy on the Monopoly board, "this bit was older than God-"

"Well, _you_ would know, you were around."

"– Open the damned door, one of you!"

A second of scolded silence. The lock clacks.

The door is allowed to swing open with a creak before anybody steps inside. Even then, they come slow and shuffling at first. Jack follows them by their presences and energy, the size and weight of them. Enough time passes for eyes to sweep the room twice and once more to be certain. Then, changes; the biggest shape, Petey, sinks with relief. One rounder and more suspicious does nothing at all. Quinn, for its part, flings itself onto the bed, making the old springs squeal. Pouting now, "We _like_ old bits, Cap. Vintage is big this season. Me and Petey are bringing some of the old stuff back."

"Mmh, caught your little _conga line_." Jack virtually hears Cap rolls his eyes. He has long since decided on his least favourite clown.

"Laugh it up – or rather, don't – but you caught it on _Youtube_ , Cap. This time next week, me and him'll be a viral sensation."

"Viral indeed; just these few brief minutes together, I already feel under the weather."

Jack tenses, pushing back from the door. By the sound of his voice, he knows Cap turned toward him just now.

He knows he turns away again too when Quinn balks, "Hey!" That's when Jack realizes he's being protected. "Hey, what're you so hung up on this Horseman for, anyway?"

"Your father wants to see him."

"What for?"

"He wants all of them."

"But what _for_?"

" _Ours not to wonder why_ , little clown. You'll never get anywhere in this organization asking silly questions."

"Oh, well, excuse me, but considering one of them came hair-close to getting murdered last night-"

Barely a murmur, but he's an inch from the other side of the door and Jack hears it as clearly as if it were right by his ear, "And if it wasn't for you meddling kids…"

There is no disbelief. Nobody questions the Captain, no one asks what he could possibly mean, no one is hoping they heard him wrong. Jack doesn't need to see them to know that Petey and Quinn are only staring, lips parted, that some part of their world has crumbled. He knows this because he feels it and because he feels absolutely nothing, doesn't care at all, when Cap reaches back to tap the bathroom door, "He's right behind me. I can hear him _seething_ now."

A precise little bark, "Petey, go!" and though Cap tries to stop him Quinn jumps up from the bed and slams him out of action. Over the scuffle, the crash of Cap's weight against the bathroom door, "Run! Get May, wait for me, I'll call."

That's as long as shock and Quinn's minimal weight can hold the Captain. It grunts at being thrown off, an awkward landing, but the second Cap straightens, Jack can open the door.

He finds himself looking at the tip of an umbrella. The oddness of it freezes him for just a heartbeat. "Wilder, no!" but Quinn's yell comes too late to be a warning. A fine cloud of gas puffs from the chrome, blooming damp over his face.

Jack hits the ground already sleeping.


	37. Chapter 37

About the same time Jack's eyes shut, Henley's open. At first, she doesn't notice; there's nothing to see.

The perfect dark locks her out of waking entirely. She could go under again with ease. Except, Henley's not comfortable. Sleeping on something very flat and hard, there's an ache in the small of her back, and her arms feel like they've been folded over her chest for the longest time. She wriggles. Anyway, she tries to; half a second and both elbows are bruised, and her nose is brushing something an inch from her face.

Panic is instantaneous. Her trapped breath, let loose, would be a scream. Both hands press up in front and slap flat on polished wood, pressing again and again when it doesn't budge.

 _Coffin_. That's where she is, and it's the only thought Henley has, constant and deafening. _Coffin-coffin-coffin,_ killing off every other sense, every moment except the one she's trapped inside. She has nothing but the pitch-black box. Inside and outside, she has nothing but the box.

It takes a flash of pain in her wrist, the clack of her knee against the same lid, to stop her frantic struggling.

Through the ache of her bruising kneecap, she realizes the noise it made was hollow, echoing. So a coffin, maybe, but at least she hasn't been buried yet. And though it's a little too hot to be comfortable, she's having no trouble breathing. These facts are just enough to help her swallow down that scream. While the other hand massages the still-crackling wrist Henley measures out her breathing until it levels. Not only is it a big step towards regaining some calm, but she's quieter. Henley listens intently. It's hard to be sure, they might just be waiting her out, but she can't hear anybody outside the box. So not only has she escaped burial _so far_ , but she's not in any immediate danger of it either.

There could be something to be said for such a cruel awakening; it makes every other little thing in your day seem like such a sunbeam.

"Is anybody there?" She's so sure she won't get any answer at all that it's worth the risk of attracting the wrong kind of attention. And while she's on such a great run of luck, who can say? Maybe there'll be somebody around to help.

A few wasted seconds, another tentative, "Hello?" and it becomes clear her luck won't stretch that far. Henley's on her own with this one.

So with a sigh and a little more care this time, she pushes out her hands again. As far as she can reach, in every direction, she explores the smooth surface in front of her. She does it with her eyes shut; she can't see a thing anyway, and behind her lids she can imagine flower-speckled meadows and echoing banquet halls and wide open canyons that are not the box and bear no resemblance to it. The closeness of her roving fingertips keeps it from having any real effect. Still, she keeps trying, turning to beaches and boundless oceans and a cloudless sky.

They all vanish when her right index finger touches something colder than the coffin lid. Metal, a flat, wide bar of it pressing out into the edge of the lid and down the side. The bulges at the corner seam have grooves, a screw-head rounding out either end. A hinge.

Very slowly, so as not to lose it, her hand moves and finds the edges. Either end of the hinge blooms in a broad brass trefoil.

Brass? How does she know what colour they are, what kind of metal? Because Henley knows this hinge. She knows there's another one at about the level of her hip and one on down at mid-calf. Henley knows this box. It's not a coffin at all, it's her first act transportation box, and if it has been at all damaged in the process of her apparent kidnapping, Henley won't be responsible for her actions. Do what you will with the lady herself and the response will be measured and appropriate. But this is specialist equipment. You can't get it made just anywhere. Due to the delicate nature of certain mechanisms, you can almost never have it repaired. If this box has been damaged, Henley won't rule out violence.

For the moment, however, she puts that out of her mind. The only salient point is, Henley knows this box. She knows she won't open it, won't get so much as a line of light around the rim, by shoving the lid. The locks are entirely concealed within the wall. They can only be activated from outside. Even then, only if you're wearing the right gloves.

But just locking someone in is no trick.

Henley shifts all her weight to the right hand wall, angling as much of her body sideways as she can in the space. Then, hands and feet all pressing out as hard as she can, she braces. When she shoves again, it's not to open the lid. The twist of her core throws the box just a few inches up on one side. Not much, but enough to prove to Henley that this can be done. Another push and she gets the coffin up on its corner. For one frozen moment it could fall either way. Henley holds her breath and ends up flat on her back again. It's a mistake she doesn't make twice. Next time she finds herself on the pivot, she jerks hard, bruises hip and heel and head all to send the box crashing onto its narrow side and then its face. The back of her hand saves her nose from breaking.

After that, it couldn't be easier. Just a matter of worming a hand around to her back, pressing on a panel behind her ribs until it clicks and opens. Then she can reach out and pull the simpler latch on the coffin's back.

The trapdoor pops up. Henley climbs out and lies for a second on an unfamiliar floor, letting all the little aches of her escape cry out for a minute. You have to let them have their way. Force them under immediately and they'll punish you later, rear up screaming at the worst possible moment, stiffen you throbbing sore when you ought to be asleep. You have to acknowledge them. Anyway, that's what Henley tells herself in this moment when she cannot move.

In the moment after, when she is pushing the pain away, she tells herself the facts.

Rebecca came for her. It was Rebecca's intention to reveal her to the world, to strip her down to her fiercely-defended identity and to rain down upon her all the unthinkable problems that would come along with that. To this end, Rebecca drugged her. And that is where Henley quite literally loses the plot because that, evidently, has not come to pass and, quite contrary to being unmasked, she has been hidden away.

When she finally sits up to take stock of her surroundings, she finds that the coffin she woke in was just a box within a box.

The room around her is stark and empty. The floor she's sitting on is bare concrete, as are the walls, and unpainted. There are no windows and only a single bulb hanging down from the ceiling. The door is behind her, so that at first glance, not even seeing that, her heart stops just the way it did at the thought of being buried alive. Irrational, this time, and much easier to breathe through. A glance over her shoulder and it's gone.

Admittedly, the vanishing of her fear has less to do with the glossy red door and more to do with the discovery that there is a second box lying right behind her.

Henley edges up to sit next to it. It is identical to the box she woke up in, and just as immovably locked. No echo comes back when she raps on the lid – not empty, packed with something soft and, Henley suspects, warm. Something like her. She lowers her head, listens with her ear to the wood for any sign of life. Whether she can't hear anything or there's nothing _to_ hear is too hard to tell and too hard a question. Quick enough she gives up on listening. She kneels instead and pushes at the coffin's top edge. But the outside is polished smooth. The lid sits flush, with no lip. Far from flipping the box, she can't even get it off the ground.

From sheer frustration she cries out and slaps the side of the box.

When the contents of the box slap back, she cries out louder. A groggy yell joins her, harmonizing for just a second before it strengthens to drown her out. Henley tries to cut in, through the pleas for help, the demands for an explanation. She tries to be comforting and calming. That is, right up until she finds she recognizes the voice.

"Wait. Danny?" Nothing, no response, too busy cursing his captors to even know she's here. The speed and strength of her surging annoyance washes out any doubts she might have had about who's in there. One balled-up fist swung sideways like a hammer, she pounds the side panel by his hidden head. In his startled silence, "Shut up!"

"…Henley?"

" _Thank_ you."

"You were being nicer before you knew it was me."

" _You_ ought to know better. All that screaming and yelling – I could have been _anybody_."

"What screaming? There wasn't any screaming, Henley, it was j-" She tunes out. Rolls her eyes, sighs and, while resisting the urge to punch the side of the box again, finds that there is something about all of this that she has missed since she saw him last.

But it would never do to let Danny know that. She barks, "Stop whining and press over away from my voice."

"Press where? I can't move."

"We have to get the box to flip. Shift your weight."

A little more gentle guidance – and another sharp order or two – he gets the idea. When the coffin rocks Henley grabs it underneath, pushing until she feels the stretch across her back and down both arms, until her legs tremble with the effort of trying to turn it over. Once it's on its side, she turns her shoulder against it. The box falls with a crash and another yell from Danny.

Henley opens the latch and leaves him to knock the door open himself. He rises up with one hand pressed to an aching nose. Quick, almost grudging, Henley asks, "You okay?"

"Yeah."

"That was way harder than when I did it. Have you put weight on?"

"It's toning, more than anything. Muscle weighs more than-", but that's when he hears the mocking note in her voice and stops himself. He turns to glare. Right before his eyes can settle on her, Henley stands up out of his sightline. She goes to the red lacquer door with the words, "Nice hair," chasing her. Danny himself comes about thirty seconds after, standing right by her side. By then, Henley has already tried to turn the handle and inspected the surface of the door for any visible lock mechanism. There doesn't even seem to be a hinge. She tells him as much. Danny nods, accepts, then goes on to check both of these things anyway.

Once they're both satisfied, they fall still, stumped, both staring at the door's gleaming panels as if it might be intimidated into opening.

Somehow, this approach fails them. They give up in the same moment and wheel away. Henley is already sitting down as Danny is closing the door of the box he arrived in. He doesn't settle by her, but wanders on to check the walls she has already studied. He asks, dimly thoughtful, "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Dropping a sandbag on Trapdoor Becky. You?"

"A blue-lipped clown darting me with a gun she took out of her afro."

Henley feels those words sink in, _painfully_ slow, and by the same increments turns her head to look directly at him. His expression, or lack thereof, tells him she heard right. Her gaze swings back to centre and, "You win." Soon after that she straightens her shoulders, shakes the daze off. "Okay," she begins, "We need to catch each other-"

But Danny had begun too, and in the same moment. "I meant it, by the way. I said it like I didn't, but-"

"Mean what?"

"Your hair. I can tell you hate it and I understand why, but it's nice, it suits you and-"

And as little as she understands of what is happening, as impossible as their situation seems, she's glad he's here. Henley missed it all, she knows nothing of how Danny came to be here. To her, it has the kind of the magic none of them is capable of, to lose consciousness in the dark, alone and in danger, and somehow to wake with the one person you might have called out for.

But it would never do to let him know that. Snapping, "Danny? Focus."

She waits, but no witty retort is forthcoming. Henley glances over her shoulder. It's only a reflex; any time Danny appears to resist his perpetual desire for the last word, she likes to check he's okay. This time, the reflex turns into a double-take; he's at the far wall where the room is darkest, both hands pressed against it, leaning close.

"Danny?"

"Come here a second."

Henley goes to him, and as she does she feels the air around her getting colder, clammy. It sticks to her skin like city smog. When she mimics him, laying her hands to the stone, she almost pulls away again. The wall is freezing, weeping slick with slime. "Damp."

"More than damp," Danny mutters, "It's wet. And listen-" Faint behind dungeon-thick walls, but there's a rushing noise, like holding certain shells against your ear. "Henley, I… I think we're underwater."

More reflexes; there are thoughts behind them but they are too quick to articulate. The result of them is this; Henley, after feeling her own pockets and finding them empty, wheedles a hand into one of his and finds a single copper cent. She pitches it hard behind her, back to the gleaming red door. The noise it makes when it bounces off the surface is sharp and metallic. And hollow.

By the time the coin has stopped spinning she has caught up with it. This time she looks past the surface of the door, turning her head to see that it has unframed edges. The red metal ends a millimetre shy of the wall. That's why the handle wouldn't turn, why there doesn't seem to be a lock. The door has no hinges because it was never designed to open.

Danny's logic follows a step behind hers; "It isn't real." By the time he adds, "But if the door isn't real then how did we-?", Henley is already pushing one of the coffins up on top of the other.

If they're underwater, then this is a cellar. If the door is fake, there's only one way they could have gotten down here. Henley figured out the probable position of the trapdoor by looking at how the boxes fell next to each other. Her fingertips have found an edge in the concrete ceiling by the time Danny has climbed up to join her.

"Boost me," she tells him.

"Wait. We don't know what's up there."

"And what's down here?"

He looks around at empty boxes and algae-scented nothing. With a sigh, he turns back to her. He doesn't quite take her hand but touches it, fingers trailing down the bones that spread from her wrist. "Sure about this?"

Her hand catches hold of his for all the answer she'll give. It might be a terribly sweet moment, but it doesn't last long enough. Henley lets go because, in the end, she asked for a boost and hasn't gotten one yet. Danny takes the hint. He crouches to take hold of her boot – "The heels are never going away, are they? How many times have I had a spike heel in my palm?" – and pushes her up into the ceiling.

With her shoulder grinding against what appears to be a paving slab, Henley's not paying a lot of attention, but it sounds a lot like Danny keeps talking down below her. She catches something about Rebecca Dasko and tunes in for a second. When it turns out he's not giving her any useful information, just some ill-constructed, stumbling apology, about dragging her into this and not protecting her and other things that make minimal sense, she tunes back out again and concentrates on moving the stone above them.

She gets a corner out of place, up onto the floor above. After that Danny shifts his grip; her heel bites his knee now, and with both arms he braces her legs so she can put all her strength into shoving it out of her way. The second there's room Henley hauls herself up.

Sitting on the edge of the opening, she surveys her new surroundings.

Or anyway, they ought to be new.

"You're not going to believe this," she breathes.

"What?" he asks. "What won't I believe? Henley? What's up there?", but she's having trouble answering. It's not just that she's stunned, or that something prevents her – it's simply that there's nothing to tell him.

What's up here? Nothing. A grey floor. Grey walls. An empty room with cool wet air and a bare lightbulb. In front of her, there's a gleaming, lacquered door, in a shade of red that hits the retina like a gunshot.


	38. Chapter 38

Three rubber chickens, tucked up under stained blue sheets like good little teddy bears, like someone kissed their individual wrinkled coxcombs, night-night-sleep-tight, wished them pleasant dreams by their undoubtedly ridiculous names. Lula's got a picture of it. She keeps looking at it. Primarily, this reassures her that the picture is real. With dawn burning up over the city, making cinders of her second half-slept night running, she could easily believe she dreamt the plastic poultry. She dreamt Quinn tapping its poorly-defined foot by the door while Petey put them to bed, so why shouldn't she have dreamt it all?

And wouldn't it be wonderful if she had? If, when the next set of obsessive little twitches lights the screen of her cell phone, there was no picture at all? How incredible would that be? If there were no picture, then it was never sent to her. If it was never sent to her, Jack was never in that room. If there was no picture he might edge up to her now, trying not to wake her. He can laugh at her - it's fine, Lula doesn't mind - when he finds her mumbling about rubber chickens.

But every time she looks, the picture is still there. Either this is the smartest and most enduring nightmare she's ever suffered, or it's real. It's real and the rest is real, the part where he never called back and now she can't make him answer.

Danny won't answer either, or Merritt. Nor will Dylan, though he at least has his voicemail switched on. Not much good when he doesn't _respond_ to his messages, but Lula appreciates the gesture and it was nice, at least, to speak out loud, to get the racing thinking out of her head and onto a recording somewhere. But even the unthinking machine got tired of her in the end. It cut her off and since then she's had trouble keeps her thoughts on track at all.

They are now, in fact, entirely gone. For the last however long she has done nothing but stare at the faraway ceiling, tracing the cracks that shatter the ageing plaster like lightning. She chases herself from junction to junction, trying never to get trapped in an end. And every so often she checks if there are still three rubber chickens on her phone. That's it. It doesn't even feel like inertia anymore, it's not lethargy or last night's more brutal, smoke-scented sensation, of moving and speaking and somehow being somewhere else, like watching herself through the keyhole of a locked door. Less, even, than that. Lula isn't really present anymore. She's the shape and weight of herself lying on the couch, waiting for something to happen.

It is better this way; if Lula were to think at all, given her situation, she would soon arrive at the conclusion that she preferred, _by far_ , close proximity with blistering fire to her current state of suspended animation.

It makes a shell of her. Even when something finally does happen – Lula hears someone knocking to be let in – she rises with all the speed and fervour of a sleepwalker. Automatic, shuffling little steps take her to the door. She can see herself, the way a ghost or a security camera might, from somewhere up high and to the left. _Hates_ what she sees; what is this weird limp doll trying to get its limbs in line to cross a room? What is it and _what_ has it go to do with her? Lula wants no part of it. But she can't stop watching even when she sees, to her absolute horror, that the doll isn't even going to the right door.

It's standing at the main door, out to the stairwell, eye pressed hard to the spyhole to see who knocked.

She can see no one out on the landing when the knock comes again. This time it sounds even further away. The two halves of Lula finally coalesce and turn around. There on the balcony, rapping the glass with white-gloved knuckles, stands Petey. Though he falters, he is _trying_ to smile, waving to her now that he's been seen. A paper bag hangs from his other hand.

Lula hesitates. The reason why ought to be obvious, though you'll have to fill it in for yourself; she's still having trouble articulating.

The reason her hesitation lasts no longer than a heartbeat should require no articulation at all. However little of the story Lula might be in on, Petey was right where she needed him to be and in exactly the right moment. Not only did he act, and get her out of the burning box, but he was there when she couldn't see, could hardly breathe. When Lula needed to get back on stage, Petey put her on her feet. No question, no thought, and no hesitation, so Lula swallows hers and lets him in.

The balcony door isn't locked. She would like that to be noted, especially by anybody with any lingering suspicion about clowns. The door is barely even closed, and opens at a touch. And as soon as it does, before taking so much as a step inside, Petey grabs hold of her, both arms binding her to him tight as barrel hoops. There's nothing tentative about it. He isn't tiptoeing like the others, who always seem to be asking permission or expecting her to shove them off. He keeps hold, rocking slightly, sometimes patting her shoulder, until she's done.

Really, that's the only way Lula can describe it. Like the microwave bleeping, she's done. They fall away from each other naturally and without awkwardness.

Petey points at her, then switching his hand round to the empty hoop of 'okay'.

"Me? Obviously, man, I'm good. I mean, _considering_. Things around me, _those_ aren't great, but me, yeah, thank you for asking, I am _a_ -okay."

Thumb-up, then touching his chest, then the whole flattened hand slicing back and forth across his throat – _Good, because I'm not_.

"Yeah, I don't know why I said any of that, everything is horrible…" The look on his face, his raised hands, _Hey, wait, not everything_ – and Petey points at the paper bag he brought with him. "What is it?"

His brow furrows. Then he looks round at what she can see and realizes he has done something very silly. A flick of his wrist and he shows her the other side, where he has written on the paper – _Replacement breakfast_.

"…Because of Paris? Pretty sure we're even for that. Steal a meal, save a l… I think that balan…" The words have stopped finishing again. This happened yesterday. She can hear them in her head but when she speaks they trail away like smoke. Hoping to kill the sensation before it goes any deeper, she moves out of the doorway, brings Petey inside.

It goes entirely against her better instincts to sit down again. Given how far gone she found herself last time she got up from the couch, it doesn't seem like a great idea. More ridiculous than this, there's a voice at the back of her head very much like her mother's telling her it isn't the polite thing to do in company. But she considers Petey's idea of a greeting and decides he won't mind, and that if there's any action required of her, he'll help get her to it. Besides, her throat is drying up again. There's a shake in each step she takes, at the ankle and echoing upward. She needs to sit down.

Once the burden of staying upright is gone, she can think a little better. And the first thing she thinks about, staring perplexed at the fine curtain moving in the breeze at the balcony door, "How did you even get up there?"

Petey eyes her like this ought to be a simple one, the easiest thing in the world. Then, fingers curled like monkey paws, his hands come up in front to show her climbing.

"Hm. Y'know, it's a pity you didn't meet Jack under better circumst…"

And there's another word she loses hold of. It slips out of her fingers the same as all the others. This time, however, Petey catches it. He grabs hold of the sentence back at the part which really mattered, and tries to answer a question she was hardly aware of asking. After an awful moment of dead static when he can't think how to communicate, he grabs the paper bag back from her, tears off a strip and, with what looks like the last splintering stub of a kohl pencil from his back pocket, tells her, _I don't know where Jack is_.

Lula nods. It's fine. She had no right to expect a better answer and plenty of reasons to expect worse. 'I don't know' is as much as she could have hoped for.

"And you, don't you usually come in a pair? Where's…?" The name is somewhere but out of reach. "…The little one?" A shrug, and it's obviously difficult for him to think of, but Lula pushes, "Is that the same 'I don't know' as Jack? Are they together?"

Hands clasped together, brought into beat like a heart at the centre of his chest. Though it isn't a gesture Lula has ever seen before, there's only one thing it could mean. She reads it in his eyes and his bitten-in lip as much as in the thumps against his breastbone. _Hope so_.

Entirely off her own initiative, energy, and strength – she tries not to let her overwhelming pride in this show through – Lula stands up and goes to the telephone. The notebook still sits next to it, still with her first initial carved in the top sheet. Don't ask her why but she tears that off and leaves it there. The rest of the pad, and the pen lying nearby, she brings to Petey. Throwing them into his lap, "Tell me everything."

The traditional 'okay' sign again, _Got it_. Then, by more complex pointing, _You eat._ _Help your head_.

Lula can't tell if he means the pounding behind her eyes or the struggle and the broken words. Either way, she'll take whatever help she can get. She sits cross-legged, straight-backed, trying to stay alert. Rather than watch him writing she uses the time to try and get her thoughts in some sort of order. She has more now than she did ten minutes ago. Not much, but more. For one, there's Petey. Based on what little she's seen so far, Lula can still make a decent guess at his strengths and skills. He can probably be depended on. Unless, of course, there's a fight, but hopefully that can be avoided.

In a minute or so, she'll have more again; she'll have whatever he can tell her.

And if that goes well, who knows? Lula might even end up with something to do, with some action she could take. Imagine how much better she could feel if she only had something to go on. Lula might find herself in a better position than almost any other Horseman; she might have a _plan_. Imagine _that_ ; a real, live plan that hasn't yet been crushed, derailed or stomped on.

But that's getting ahead of herself.

She waits for the pen's grazing to stop, then holds out her hand. The book comes back to her and Lula has to concentrate. Not just to make sure she doesn't miss any single detail that might be important, but because it's clear Petey isn't used to writing. At least, not in English. And not forward – the first line had to be scored out, having been written from right to left in a mirror image of the alphabet. After a few lines he got the hang of it, but the childish chickenscratch is still a little awkward on the eye.

Gradually, though, the hieroglyphs resolve into a very clear picture. It is detailed and cohesive, and very quickly Lula is all caught up. Honestly; she knows these events as if she lived them. But she takes none of that away with her.

All Lula takes is the Captain. She takes his name and description, his status, his position of apparent authority over Petey and Quinn. She takes the knowledge that, though it may have been a clown that saved her beneath the stage, it was a clown that tried to kill her in the first place. And this Captain, this would-be killer, he's got Jack now. That's what Lula takes from Petey's tale.

"Where?" she says. Without force or volume, but no less demanding, "How do we do this?"

Hands out, shaking his head, Petey points at Quinn's name on the page before turning his hand into a telephone, _Quinn will call_.

"No. No, we're not just going to wait. What do we do?

A hasty scrawl on a new page, _Not in danger!_ His N is still back-to-front.

"Excuse me? Look, I understand you're trying to help, and maybe you're even trying to make me feel better about all of this, but I'm not in as rough shape as everybody seems to think. I can handle this when there's something to do and I'm not just staring at walls and trying to get the smell of fire out of my hair, okay? I can take care of myself, and more to the point, I can take care of the people I love. So please, _please_ , don't treat me like I'm going to shatter into a million pieces, because that is just about the only thing that makes me want to shatter into a million pieces. And considering that 'danger' seems to be about the only thing we all have in common at the minute – _stop tapping that page at me_ , I've already told you you're lying!"

But she stops, nonetheless, for breath as much because Petey grabs her shoulder. He turns her so that he can use her back to lean on.

Even as she feels the words writhe across her back, "Unless this is an apology and our next steps, I'm not all that interested."

Petey pulls the book away and puts it in front of her. _Dad_ – and Dad is scored out and replaced with – _Boss Clown wants him_.

"Fine," Lula says, but her head shakes, "But what's he going to do when he _gets_ him?"


	39. Chapter 39

The question of just what exactly Commedia top brass like Pantalone might want with Jack Wilder or any other Horseman is another one Petey is unable to answer.

Quinn, however, could be about to find out.

Honestly, it's about time.

Once the Captain got Wilder, he tried to go after Petey. Presumably it was to stop him warning May, but Quinn didn't see it that way at the time. Quinn didn't see much, except a door that had to remain shut, a friend it had to protect. So, grotesque differences in weight and stature forgotten, it attacked. It wasn't much of a fight. All it really remembers is having a juggling club in one hand and the other fist full of Cap's greasy white hair. But then, the idea never was to cause damage. Quinn bought Petey enough time to get away, plus the time to turn a few extra corners and really disappear.

After that, the rage and adrenaline faded, and Quinn's strength went with them. The club was taken from it. The Captain's swing came at it wider, more precise and more powerful. Hours later, the lump on its head is still swollen huge, still oozing fine pink fluid over the peak. Quinn fell. In the split second of falling, it made a deliberate choice to stay fallen.

Since then, it has been playing possum. 'Since then' amounts to most of the night. It includes a long and bumpy journey bouncing around in the backseat footwell of a car it never saw – the trunk might have been more comfortable but Wilder got that – and two awkward fireman's lifts over the Captain's fatty shoulder. And for enduring these indignities, it must be said, it has had absolutely nothing in return.

Try it – Quinn dares you – try keeping your eyes shut, staying limp, saying nothing _and_ staying awake, even for ten minutes. Try it and see how many times you are tempted by the outside world. Then try it again, and imagine that the moment you choose to 'wake up' is key, that the information you may gain could turn out to be of life-or-death importance. Imagine all that, and you're learning absolutely nothing. Sure, people will talk more if they think you're unconscious, but what are you missing when you're trapped behind your eyelids?

Frankly, the stress has been unbearable. It's very unbecoming. Quinn has absolutely no buzz right now, couldn't be funny if it tried. You could set up the simplest Doctor-Doctor joke just now, and Quinn would try to knock it over with a knock-knock punchline. And who will ever appreciate this great sacrifice?

Probably nobody. Probably they'll say Quinn has been very foolish. Certainly that's what Quinn would say to Quinn, if Quinn told Quinn about this. _Why'd you do a foolish thing like that?_ , Quinn would ask, and Quinn would shrug and mumble and have no convincing answer to offer. What else would you call that, if not foolishness?

If you weren't there and you didn't see Wilder hit the floor, it's foolishness. Quinn's decision was made as it stood waiting for him to get back up. It could only think of one way to make sure it stayed with the fallen Horseman without being considered a threat.

For the record, in the dull, silent hours since then, it has come up with no fewer than seven better ideas and is trying hard not to let them bother it.

It's getting easier, now that the ordeal is nearly over. An hour ago it was hauled out of the car, carried hurriedly into a building it hasn't yet set eyes on, and dumped, upside down, in an armchair. There it was left alone. Time wore on and, feeling veins all over its face threaten to start popping, had been about to give up and miraculously waken.

Then Panty arrived. Quinn knows him by his harsh, huffy breathing, and by all the little curse words that spark along beneath that rushing air like trailer park Christmas lights in a storm. Nowhere near as fierce as usual, though; he's in a very, _very_ good mood. Quinn decided it was worth a vein or two to find out why.

For the last minute or so, Panty has been pacing back and forth past its chair. From growls and shuffles, he's contemplating kicking it awake.

The honk of a bicycle horn distracts him. Quinn flinches too, but luckily the noise is over his shoulder and he looks away. The classic noise is a text alert. Whatever he reads makes him laugh, deep and booming, absorbing him entirely so that it is only just fading as he's calling back the sender. Quinn risks a glance between fluttering lashes and sees him pushing tears from the corners of his eyes. Little aftershocks of that same initial laugh still bubble up while he waits, and when an answer comes he makes himself bellow again with, "Hello, jailbird!"

Quinn struggles not to pout; it got _yelled at_ after its most recent arrest.

"Now, now!" Panty goes on, in the same impossible good humour, "Princess, baby, _caramellina_ , did you think I'd let you rot in jail? Who takes care of you, _cuore mio_? Now, stop crying and tell me what's really wrong."

Who else could have gotten arrested? How many of the organization are even in Europe? Petey and the Captain are both accounted for, Collie's been arrested before and would know better anyway than to run crying to Pantalone. Quinn doesn't know where Doc is - though it would very much like to – but Dad would never talk to Mom like that anyway.

"Is that it? Is that all that's bothering you? Oh, _angioletta_! Oh, sweetheart, you're all upset because you didn't get that bony Raggedy Anne doll?" Quinn feels a flash of panic before it remembers, it dyed its hair from red to crayon-yellow right before Paris. "Well, then, it's a good thing your big boss man was paying attention, isn't it? You come find me and we'll see if I don't have a skinny, red-headed present for you."

She's a squealer, whoever this series-of-pet-names may be. This sorceress – and sorceress she must be; the conversation has been going on for a minute now and Panty hasn't sworn once, and has not raised his voice – squeaks down the line so long and loud even Quinn hears it. It hears her gabbling too, fast breathless questions. Behind the shut lids, it rolls its eyes. The sweet little girl bit has never impressed it. It's too easy and it's not all that funny. But hell, if Pantalone is enjoying it, if it's keeping him sweet, and there's a chance he may deal more sweetly with Quinn, Honey-Precious-Tweety-Bird can keep right on screaming.

Panty laughs through the questioning and adds wryly, "Might even have another little surprise for you too… Nah, I'm not telling… I'm not telling..." Then, with his first flash of hot frustration, " _I'm not telling_!" Sweet and soft again, "You'll just have to come and see for yourself…"

This isn't even funny. Until that momentary flare, Quinn was becoming distinctly bored. Good thing it's playing dead so well; if there was the slightest chance it might have heard any of this, it would be downright embarrassing. And given Pantalone's position in the organization, Quinn would like to think he locked the door before he decided to have such a dull, pedestrian, such an _outright sappy_ conversation.

Then again, it hopes very much he didn't lock the door…

There are more terms of endearment, more kissy faces, before the torture ends. None of it is of any use or lends itself to analysis, however, so Quinn focuses on the act of coming round. This is no mean feat. It's tough enough to fake it and make it look natural but Quinn, as a clown, has extra considerations. Quinn can't just roll out of bed in the morning, stagger to a bathroom, onward to a kitchen, make itself a cup of coffee with bleary eyes, nothing of the sort. How normal would that be? Where's the joke?

So it has to strike a convincing balance between waking up with a head injury and its inherent training. At first it only grunts, careful to make sure human nature shows through first and foremost. Then its hand drifts towards the lump on its head. The movement draws Pantalone's attention. He throws his phone down on the window ledge and leans in to grabs Quinn's hair, tugging hard. "Ow-ow-ow, no, I don't want to go to school today…"

"That's a _terrible gag!"_ So it seems as if only _Bella-Bella_ gets to hear his special smiley voice. A lesser clown than Quinn might be offended, but then it's used to not being Dad's favourite. "That's _ancient_!"

"I'm sorry… No, I'm not sorry, I'm bringing it back." Finally easing its eyes open, it doesn't have to fake the part where it struggles to focus on him. "You're on the ceiling, Pops…" With a sigh, he takes it by the shoulders and turns it roughly over, belly bent into the corner of the chair. "Oh. Why was I upside down please?"

Panty crouches down level with it, elbows propped out on his knees. With one crooked hand he bounces Quinn's head, a calloused knuckle pressing cruelly at its bloodied temple. "Because you were bad, Arlechinno. I don't imagine El Capitan felt much like making sure you were comfortable."

"He hit me with a club."

"Correction; he hit you _back_. Can you tell me why you would attack a great and respected clown like your Captain, you… _rapscallion_?"

You'd scream right out loud, you'd bite your nails and beg it not to speak, if you could hear the dreamy, distant honesty with which it confesses, "He wanted Wilder." You'd fear for it. You need only look at Pantalone and see him twitching with rage. Quinn, however, has its chin tucked down over the edge of the armchair, chewing its dry tongue. It doesn't seem afraid. You should go with that; it's had a lot of time to plan this.

"And would you care to tell me _why_ , my dearest little child, you chose to protect a _Horseman_ , over one of your own?"

"Wait-" Quinn picks up its head as far as it will go. When that's not far enough, it reaches back and grabs the arms of the chair. Its skewed legs fold down either side of its face and it unrolls, with the back of the armchair for support, out from underneath. Once it's sitting straight, looking right at him, it shows its open hands with a grin. "C'mon, I've been figuring out that move since I woke up."

He concedes, "Very nice. But _Quinn_ -"

"No, that's what I was gonna ask you – who said anything about protecting him? I was trying to tell Cap this but he wouldn't listen to me. Panty, _I_ wanted Wilder." It watches him, counting the tics that go off like firecrackers around his grimace and narrow eyes. But he isn't saying anything and so, as its act dictates, Quinn must. "He beat up Petey, Dad, and based on nothing, absolutely _nothing_. _I_ wanted him, I wanted to stomp his face flat, I mean, wouldn't you? If it was Doc, if it was you in your pair, wouldn't you want to tear him limb from limb? And don't tell me you put it past me, I _know_ you don't, and I know you wanted him and that's fine, you could have had him, but I needed a turn first, and Cap wouldn't _listen_ so-"

It stops because his big hand clamps around its face, thumb pressing up under its jaw, fingers pinching its nose down.

Panty scratches his chin in thought, then spends a hasty moment smearing his greasepaint back over the stubbled pink he reveals.

"Think very carefully before you answer my next question, kiddo. I'm not angry yet, but we're getting there. Was any of that true?"

Still silenced, it places one hand on its heart and the other in the air.

There's a special sort of fear that comes along with lying to a father, biological or not. It goes deeper than just being scared of punishment and the possibilities of their authority. It strikes something more primal; that you're the worst kind of person. A father is someone you ought to trust implicitly and if you're lying to him, it means you don't. You're disloyal as well as dishonest, unnatural as well as unkind. But as Quinn waits to see if its gambit will work that feeling fades out pretty fast. It soon finds it fears nothing but Pantalone's volatility, and how little it knows about what's going on.

Panty gives the grim suggestion of a nod. Quinn's breath stays held – not just because his grip is still pinching its nose but because until he speaks it doesn't know if the lie has gone over.

"Okay," he says, and the relief is crushing, the incredible release, sudden weightlessness and sudden burning in its lungs. "I'll go see what state he's in-"

"I don't want him KO'ed, Dad; I want him to know it's me."

Another tight little nod. "Wait here. And try and stop talking."

Quinn nods earnestly. A twist of thumb and forefinger locks its lips. But before he can even get to the door, they are unlocked again. "Hey, Dad?"

" _What_?!"

"Is Mom around?"

A long pause; his whole too-large frame seems to hang on the doorframe and on a moment the same way the words hang unspoken. "He's under the weather," he says, but Quinn barely hears it. The silence told it all it needed to know. That was the silence of someone choosing between excuses. And when the answer came it made not the slightest attempt at a joke. The last of its doubts, what few it had, are gone now. Quinn believes with all its heart that the danger around it is very, very real.

The second the door closes it rushes to the window. There's no real view, except the grey stone side of another building very close by. Looking left and right, the alley between is too narrow to show it any landmarks. It's only when it looks down, and sees dull green water under the broad ledge instead of a street, that Quinn learns anything useful.

It snatches up Panty's phone and scrolls through the contacts. This is where it could find its own bad habits coming back to haunt it; bad habits like never separating from Petey, and carrying both their phones around, and never being exactly sure which one is which. There are _two_ numbers one above the other, both stored simply as 'P/Q'. It has no choice but to send the same message to both. It could have been a real issue, if it had come here with one of the cells in one of its dozens of pockets. The Captain was very thorough when he searched it in the hotel room.

But Petey has both the phones. He's had them since the Coliseum; baggy pockets don't mix so well with a conga line.

Out of time, hearing heavy footsteps coming back toward the room, Quinn chooses its coded words carefully.

 _Need ur biggest hug_ – so Petey will know who's texting.

 _the funhouse._ _Aces is here 2_ – so he knows where to find it and can come help.

And finally, more cryptic but he'll catch the meaning – _Denmark._ _E-thing v v Denmark._

The message is deleted within a second of being confirmed sent.

At a touch, the door handle rattles. Quinn spins back toward the window. Though reflex and training tell it to fling the phone away, to be seen, to _get a damn laugh_ , there's a more honest anxiety which tells it Pantalone won't find it funny. It slips the phone silently out of its hand onto the sill, and covers the move by pushing both hands down. Leaning forward, feet off the floor, its nose presses against the glass. It strikes a passable false note somewhere between cute and concussed, murmuring, "Crazy gross… These canals are getting slimier every time I visit."

It times these words to coincide with the door opening. Trouble is, the door does not open. The rattle was that of the handle being pulled tight. Now, too late, and its painful performance unobserved, Quinn hears the key turn in the lock.


	40. Chapter 40

"Lula, no." It is not the first time Dylan's ever had to say that, he doesn't imagine it will be the last. Today, however, he means it more intensely.

It was never his intention to answer the phone. He wanted to wait until he had something to tell her. With McKinney hopefully on the way, it shouldn't be long. But Lula, and this is something he is both pained and proud to admit, tricked him. When she realized her own number wasn't getting a response, she borrowed another phone. With so much going on and so many possibilities, Dylan can't ignore an unknown number the way he'd like to.

It worked beautifully. The only thing apart from his pride which tempers how impressed he is, is that she borrowed the phone from a clown.

"And I know what you're going to say," she gabbled fast, "and I know you probably think I'm not making my best decisions at the moment, all things considered, but I really do think I've got a good clown, I think I got lucky, clown-wise. I mean, he seems to be as confused as I am. That can only be a good thing, right? Even if the rest of them are bad, Petey definitely doesn't seem to know about it so-"

"Lula, if you've _got_ a point-"

Her voice changes. It turns hard and precise. It's not the first time Dylan's had to consider the possibility that she only talks in those endless trills until she wears you down, until she knows you're bound to listen. "He wants to take me to Venice. That's where they're based. That's where Jack's been taken. So that's where I'm going."

"No!"

" _Yes_ , Dylan."

"Lula, give me a chance. Give me ten minutes, before we go taking the word of clowns." Nothing. Whether she's really thinking about it or just sighing is impossible to say. "Please. It's not you I don't trust."

"Ten minutes?"

"Ten minutes."

He lets her go hating almost everything about the call. That she's been left alone, that there was no one else for her to discuss this with, that she felt she had to manipulate him to even get an answer. He hates the knot it leaves in his stomach.

As deep in the dark as he is and as desperate as it makes him, maybe Dylan is better off not knowing where anybody is. He'd disagree most vehemently, if you put the idea to him. A brave man always will. He'll always tell you it's better to know. Whether you like the facts or not, you have to have them. If you don't have them how can you possibly act on them?

If you value your nose the shape it is now, don't ask him where all this staunch, upright philosophy was when Petey and Quinn tried to issue the original dire warning. That was an exception. Excepting such exceptions, the theory is solid. You can't make a bad situation better unless you're aware of it.

The problem with the current situation, however, and why he's probably better off not knowing, is that it is so extreme, and so multifaceted. Think of Danny and Henley, trapped in those maddening, interlocking, red door rooms. Think of Jack, alone and unconscious at Pantalone's mercy, without even what little backup Quinn might have provided. Think of Merritt arrested and Lula stuck between one nothing and another. Half of them couldn't even give their own location. All of this information could be dropped in Dylan's lap and there'd be nothing he could do about it. He'd only know. Simple uncertainty would be turned into a bad poker hand of wildly varied fears. Even if Dylan found a way to keep them in check, to concentrate on those things he can help with, they'd linger. Distractions, each requiring some small percentage of his attention at all times, all blooming into a thousand possibilities a piece, until he was drowning in them.

And until he drew a very obvious conclusion – if they're all out of action, and Dylan is the only one entirely free to act, he's the only one who can make a difference. It's a pressure he already feels and it is already murder. To have it driven so viciously home might be more than his resolve can bear up to.

So maybe, despite what he might tell you, Dylan is better off not knowing.

Without those disruptions, his focus is razor sharp as he searches for Chase McKinney in the old port of Genoa. The town, he chose for its place on the map. It is in between major cities and airports, and the best transport hub he could safely reach by this morning. As well as that, if you draw a line from Monte Carlo through Albenga – the place McKinney mentioned on the phone last night – and carry it on, Genoa isn't much of a deviation.

That last one is a fallacy. Whoever took Danny and Henley could have turned in any direction at any time. But Dylan had to think fast, during that call. He has placed himself in what he thought was the best logistical position from which to pursue whatever leads he finds here.

He is, in fact, hoping to find more than just a lead. He wants what Chase has got. He wants Merritt's phone and whatever means of tracking Danny that provides. Why Merritt and Danny felt the need to track each other, and felt the need to keep it to themselves, that's not a concern anymore. Less than eight hours ago it occupied his mind almost totally. His reaction to the knowledge changed moment by moment, swinging like a pendulum round between rage and guilt and a half-hearted sort of pride. But he's let go of that; who cares? Who cares when it has worked out? Getting that phone is his first step to getting back in control.

Unlike Paris or Rome, Genoa is any other city going about its ordinary morning. There are no concessions for tourists here, no guided gluts of Bermuda shorts, no stutter of SLR clicks. Visitors are expected, but they are not pandered to. Dylan sticks out. Still, he can't bring himself to think of it as a handicap; McKinney will stick out too. He finds a spot on one of the benches that ring the regimented palm trees and scans the sparse scattering of people. Though this isn't quite what he planned – he wanted the cover of crowds, a crush to hide his theft – it protects him too. There's always the chance McKinney won't appear in person, will choose not to play the game but skip right to the end of it, and just send police.

With the square sweeping away to his right, wide and open, a restaurant behind him with its inevitable back entrance, and the marina on his left as a last resort, Dylan's fairly sure he can make a swift and certain escape if he has to. It's a relatively petty victory. Making sure of his exits in public is instinct to him. Something he does as natural as breathing, counting the doors and windows when he walks into a room, making sure locks don't turn behind him. He learned the worst of his paranoia the hard way and has perfected it with training. Still, Dylan will take any certainty he can get, at the minute. Moments of victory are too rare to wait for one worth his while. And knowing this one little thing frees up a portion of his mind that might otherwise have been occupied.

As his every empty thought has all night, this one fills with the echo of McKinney's voice. Every second of last night's ugly phone call is burned into him. He could write you out the script right now if you wanted and not struggle over a single word.

At the time, it enraged him, seeming as it did to tell him absolutely nothing. He undid all of Columbina's good work making up the hotel room, throwing anything that would move, hitting anything that wouldn't. If Henley gets billed for the dresser mirror, she can bring it to Dylan. He won't say a word apart from 'sorry'.

Maybe he'd add, 'I overreacted' – as he has lived with the echoes of that gleeful, oozing voice, they have given up some of their hidden meanings. For instance, whatever he did to get Merritt arrested was not done from a distance. They must have spoken. There are other means by which he might have gotten the phone but how else could Chase have known he and Danny went to Monaco in the first place?

Dylan's been working at every word. It's become default now. He finds himself still going at it even once there's nothing left to find, cracking them open like ribs so he can reach in and grab the heart out of them. Not that that's an image Dylan has countenanced, not at all, has never imagined inflicting that on anybody, not at all, never mind any specific person he might be looking for right at this moment, but the comparison holds.

All he really means, Chase told him more than he meant to.

No, let's be absolutely clear – Chase let it slip that he had a way of tracking Danny. He did this without ever checking if, for whatever reason, Danny and Dylan had parted ways. Whether he meant to or not is unknown and unknowable. It is no more than an enormous act of kindness from Dylan to assume that this was done by accident, and not out of any blood-simple backwoods stupidity.

Now, it's not his specialist subject. He'd need to talk to Merritt if he was going to be really sure. But somehow it doesn't fit. Doesn't sound right. Dylan only ever met Chase in blessedly brief flashes but somehow he can't fit these mistakes into his oily, sycophantic cadences.

He arrives at the word 'trap'. In the same heartbeat, he begins to stand again. He can't see anyone coming for him, but that's never enough. What you see is never the half of it. His craft taught him that long before his profession ever had to and _long_ before things were ever this bad. The indecision is painful; if there ever was a morning he could sit down and play dumb and just pray he's wrong, this is the one. He needs McKinney, there's no doubt about that. But if he's seen, and forced into deeper hiding, what help can he offer his team then? Captured, what good is he to anybody?

The choice is what traps him right now. Regretting his choice of meeting point – too open, too exposed – he still can't bring himself to leave.

The ring of his phone makes up his mind; Merritt's number on screen but Dylan knows better than to hope. A phone call and still, whatever way he turns, there's nothing to see but normality, a city going to work. He takes off before he even answers, sticking to the building walls and the grey morning's absorbing shadows. There's no hello when he connects the call – first because he's got nothing to say to Chase McKinney, second because he doesn't trust himself to say a thing. Third because a security guard is strolling past an open door on his left and he's hiding the distinction of his voice.

Not that McKinney needs him to speak anyway; he's already laughing.

Once he's got control of himself, "Shrike, you silly goose. You tried to be sneaky, didn't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." The effort that goes into making truth sound like a dangerous denial is huge.

"Trying to send me to _Genoa_ and you're all the way away in _Venice_ … What was it? Ambush? Set-up? Did you use police or your special little _magic_ fr-?" He doesn't get to finish that. Dylan doesn't need to hear anymore. He changes direction, thinking now of transport as well as escape, and calls Lula back.

"I changed my mind. Take care of yourself, watch the guy, but go to Venice."

"Uh, okay. Yeah, we'll get going. Great…"

"You're already on the way, aren't you?"

"…Ah, gosh, you got me, yeah, I'm-"

"You were already on the way the first time you called, weren't you?"

"Yes."


	41. Chapter 41

Nothing's ever locked.

Few know that these are words Jack has lived his life by philosophically as well as in more concrete terms, that they have kept him upbeat in some pretty rough moments. There are more keys in life than just the ones you can hold your hand, aren't there? The social keys when you don't fit in and you're locked out of the circle, the keys to the problems that keep locked gates between you and what you want, the mental keys when it's your own thinking that's getting in the way – nothing's ever locked. What better attitude can you ask of yourself than to accept truly that nothing is ever locked?

If, however, you're trapped in an unfamiliar room with nothing in it except an elaborate four-poster bed with carved and gilded posts made up in rainbow-striped bedsheets and a mound of furry pillows, and you've had your eye pressed to the jamb of the enormous dark door for a good ten minutes now and have assessed that in addition to the old mortice lock beneath the handle there's a solid Yale up top where you can't even reach, a deadbolt and two hasp-and-staple catches on the outside secured with padlocks so heavy they don't even rattle when you put your shoulder to the door, not to mention that fat old clown with the moustache took the set of picks out of your back pocket and you don't have so much as a darning needle, as a bent paperclip, as the long hook back of one of Lula's drop earrings (she'd kill him for getting it out of shape but consider the situation), then, yes, maybe, you have come up against something which is locked.

Jack was philosophical right up until the padlocks. But there's no crisis of faith; his belief in the maxim is strong enough to take this one knock. Besides, it takes time to have a crisis of faith. It takes energy and the diversion of thought processes. Jack has none of these things. The second it turns out the door is not an option he shifts his attention to the window.

He finds a similar view to the one Quinn has. For the record, that littlest of clowns is sighing over it now, making a game out of cataloguing the trash that drifts by in the water, trying to remember them all. There are fifty-two items on its list and it can still recite. This sounds less like an achievement if you know it has more than once looked around its own cell for some hook by which it might hang itself in the neck of its own hoodie.

But what troubles Jack is more insidious then boredom. The sight of the canal, the realization that this is not Rome, this is the first indication he's had of how far he was brought unconscious, how long he must have been out.

He shakes it off. It's just more pointless information that doesn't serve him. Like knowing what kind of the locks are on the door; it means nothing if all they amount to is that he can't get out.

The lock on the old sash is simple. He could slip it in seconds if he had something long and thin to slide past the snib. He doesn't, though. More useless information, like saying if he had a hacksaw he'd be out the door by now. Obviously he would. But he hasn't.

He's got an elbow, though. The pane has the warp and imperfections of a hand-blown original. Or, in short, real glass instead of plastic.

Jack darts back to the grotesque bed and grabs a pillow of lime green and electric blue mohair. He puts it to the spot on the window he can strike the hardest. Then, holding the pillow in place, he leans forward, checks carefully below. One ugly old rowboat bobs empty in the narrow channel, but that's all. Briefly, he considers the danger of broken glass falling past other windows, of being seen, of being heard from the hallway or adjoining rooms. He flexes his still-stiff right hand, tries the swing of his still-bandaged left arm, and thinks of the dangers of falling down such a narrow space. All very real dangers but none of them enough to stop him. Out is better. There could be a chase, he could be captured again, he might escape and find himself with nowhere to go. The prospect of dropping into the stinking water does not appeal. But out is better.

Otherwise he's just sitting here waiting to see what they do to him. No thanks.

Like all old glass, the uneven thickness resists. The first hit does nothing. But after that it cracks and it's over. It barely takes the pressure of a fist to chase the lightning shatter over the lower pane, until the split corners grind at their seams. Another sharp elbow; this time the soft challenge of the pillow disappears entirely, shoved out into mid-air with a rain of lethal shards. They hang a millisecond suspended before gravity gets the better of them.

By the time the first of them hits the river, Jack has the bedsheets slung over the serrated window frame. He rolls himself out, slow and careful until he finds a ledge beneath his first foot. Well, under the inside couple of inches of his foot, anyway.

It's fine, he can work with that, he's worked with less. To keep his heart down in his chest and stop it rising up his throat, he repeats these one-hundred-percent untrue comforts to himself. This is fine. This ledge is not a problem. He's only keeping hold of the window frame – both hands, braced against the edges – until he can figure out his next move. That's the sensible thing to do, not to rush himself, to form a plan.

The floor below him has stone Juliet balconies, but he's twelve, maybe fifteen feet from the nearest one. Below that, the tops of arches, and pillars that disappear straight down into the murky water.

 _This was a mista_ \- but he won't even let the thought finish. Out is better. Anything is better than sitting in a locked room waiting for undreamt-of punishments and not even knowing who they might come from.

Down isn't working, so Jack looks up instead. His old mantra is bolstered when he finds, he can't see up very far. Just a few feet above him is a much deeper ledge, decorative, the underside scalloped down into the plaster-pink side of the building. There's a downspout at the other end of the window. The brackets won't hold his weight for long but may be just enough for a boost up, if he's quick. Or they might not, but hey, there's water underneath him. It might not be the most inviting stream in the swamp but it'll break his fall, and all the glass has probably sunk right down, and he might not know where he's going to, but it couldn't be far to somewhere he can climb out. Getting lost isn't so much of a problem as staying put, right?

The trick to these things is to do them quickly and not think too hard.

So, quick and thoughtless, brainlessly brave, Jack turns around, swinging on the lower edge of the upper pane. On the end of the same step he grabs out for the cold iron pipe, and a half-second later, one foot is on the nearest bracket. At that point, nothing but the watery alley at his back and a four-storey drop into the murk, he's pretty much committed. Second foot, next bracket, his grip shifts in fast slaps to bring him to the last step before the pipe disappears through a hole in the stone.

There's a moment of unthinkable weightlessness when he drops back to grab the edge of the shelf above. The bolts in the last bracket rasp in the wall. They shift and the bracket tilts, throws him off. Falling, really falling, except that one hand is a half-second faster finding purchase.

It is not Jack's better hand.

The strain is unbearable. No need to keep himself from thinking anymore. He couldn't if he wanted to. It's become a survival reaction, throwing up his other arm. Hooked at the elbow, he starts to lever his weight up. The burn beneath the bandage screams against being stretched but there's no choice – the stone is the only solid thing in Jack's world. Clinging to it is simple as breathing. Striving to find more of it is like his heart beating, dealt with by a part of his brain he has no access to. The physics, the process, of making the rest of his body follow that first clutching hand, he doesn't have that. He couldn't describe that to you. He just does it.

And once it's done, he sits a moment, his burnt arm pressed against the cool of the pipe that got him here, the other hand folded underneath it to kill off the ache. It's grazed inside now too, across the palm. But he isn't thinking about that. Thinking about the next step, looking up above again. The next edge is the roof, which might not be a bad idea, but there's no obvious way to get there.

He covers up for a little more recovery time getting on his feet, edging to the next window. No one inside but some kind of storeroom; a huge basket right under the window full of hand puppets, a rail of exaggerated animal costumes (and one mansize foam ketchup bottle). Lying in the middle of the floor, a toy daschund in a ruffle collar so wide it would scrape the floor when it walked and a pointed hat dotted with coloured pompoms.

Jack almost stumbles right back off the ledge when it stands up and starts to yelp at him.

He folds away fast, flattening himself against the next stretch of wall. Listening for someone inside, for the window opening, for anything. All he gets, muffled by the next window along, "Damn it, Bruiser, shut up! We all wish Mom was here, but you're the only one keeps howling about it!"

Quinn. He edges along to follow its voice. Around the half-pillar frame he sees it, obscured by a patchwork armchair, on its knees by the door. It's working at the lock with _something_ , he can't tell exactly what, but it looks long and thin and like it might do the job. Might, except that Quinn doesn't appear to have any clue what it's doing.

Eyes sweeping the room once, fast, Jack makes sure it's alone before he raps the glass.

Quinn jumps, yelps. It sets off Bruiser again but he's starting to get the feeling it doesn't take an awful lot to set Bruiser off. The barking covers them, brings Quinn rushing to the window. Jack's a little shocked, to see it just grab the sash and throw it up. "It's not lo-" – the word gets stretched around the rush as he is dragged inside – "-cked?"

A wary, mistrustful glance out at the ledge, a momentary falter in its usual buzzing energy, "Dad knows I won't go out there." Then, recovering, "I mean, I thought I'd try the door first."

"You getting anywhere? I saw you working the lock just now, what were you u-?"

The crooked hairpin appears between its fingers, held out to him. He takes it and adjusts the bends, peering through the old brass escutcheon. Only one lock on this door, and older than the similar mechanism he found on his own. He pushes the tip of the pin inside to explore the tumblers, how easily they'll turn. And all the while, rattling hushed past his ear, "I tried to get to you earlier but they caught me lying. Pops hates that, so I guess that's how come I'm locked in. No one's even come near me. You don't have to believe me but I really did try to get to you. I tried to learn what I could too but I don't know how much of what I got is useful. I think I mistimed waking up, should have done it earlier, or later, or not. I don't know. I tried, okay? We could have been-"

"Do you have another one of these pins?"

It reaches up beneath its hood and fishes one from somewhere around the snapback of its cap. It passes it over and Jack opens it out. The crooked pin catches each tumbler by turn and, when they are turned into place, the straight one holds them back. And still, like there was never an interruption, "This place is huge, see, I tried listening at the walls but there's nobody nearby at all. I feel like they knew I'd be listening. I mean, how dare they not trust me? I'm part of the core of this organization, I've got years of loyal, fully-trained service under my belt – no offence, that's not about you and yours, maybe you were recruited sort of hasty and you could have used a real crash course in the heist side of things but that's not about you – but who are they not to trust me now? I mean, they _shouldn't_ , I'm hugely suspicious of them all, but that's not really the point."

"Grab the handle, pull when I tell you."

There, the gabbling stops. It stands over him, its weight already testing the door. Softer now, and it knows what its next words will mean to him, "Petey's coming. He's bringing May. We know a couple of safe spots in Venice, okay?"

"Okay. Pull."

He moves the last tumbler into place and, with Quinn leaning, the door pops back off the bolt. Jack's sense of satisfaction is stronger than he'd generally admit. It swells up against his ribs, takes a breath out of his lungs. A real moment of pride and validation.

Nothing's ever locked. Just sometimes you have to go the long way round.

Then he leans back to let the door swing past him and finds himself looking up from his knees at more than six feet of black-suited bulk, wearing a Rudolph tie with a light-up nose despite the fact it's almost Easter, with his clown colours painted on over a black leather luchador mask. Pride and validation return to their usual, dusty corner at the back of his mind.

"Oh –" Quinn doesn't miss a beat. "Hi, Valerie. Didn't know you were out here. We were just gonna walk Bruiser so she'll shut up. Guess you had the same idea, huh? Great minds, Val, great minds. But you shouldn't lock her in a costume room, y'know, she'll chew anything rubberised. Used to be it had to squeak, but now Doc thinks she's addicted to the chemicals, and –"

Somewhere in the course of this monologue, it managed to slip around Valerie and is now in the hall behind him. Jack can only guess what space it escaped through. Certainly he can't see any; to him, the entire doorway is full of clown bodyguard. Maybe it darted out under the arms that grabbed out with the wide swoop of an old movie monster. Whatever it did, it was quicker than Jack. He scatters back as he gets to his feet. Reaching out to pull the armchair between them, a bigger hand than his in a black glove stops it.

"Valerie, no," Quinn barks. "Valerie, that's a Horseman? Panty wants them all in one piece, right? Least until he says otherwise…" It gets all the reaction of a gnat on a summer night. Maybe that's why, when it snaps, it does so suddenly. There's no joke either. The silence is punctuated only by noises of shock and exertion.

Meaty thumps first, and a grunt from Valerie. He seems to disappear backward, caught by his collar or his novelty tie. He staggers back into the hall, across the landing. In the awkward crash against the opposite wall, shattering the glass shade of a baroque wall-light, he is turned a little sideways, and Jack sees Quinn, knees tucked up against Valerie's spine, hanging off his too-tight jacket. Yes, it was the collar it grabbed, but only with one hand. The other is full of the criss-cross lacing of his mask, pulling it tight, making a roomy loop or two.

Even as Jack looks on, skinny fingers wind these around the baroque coils of the lighting sconce.

Valerie moans behind the mask, yelling muffled and broken curses. Quinn says nothing at all. It loosens its grip and drops free. Charging down the hallway, muttering to itself about 'unappreciated' and 'so rude, amongst our own kind', it takes a sharp, harsh, "Come on!", before Jack remembers to follow.


	42. Chapter 42

"You gotta back me up when I tell Petey what I did to Val. He thinks I'm scared of him, see, because he's Dad's personal bodyguard, and also because if you melted him down you could probably make about six of me, but you saw what I did and you're my witness. Petey won't believe me, but he has to buy it from you, you're neutral. It'll help that he doesn't even like you much anymore."

Until now, Jack has been content to let it whisper to itself. He's kept quiet, following it along the plush halls. Partly he had hoped he might learn something, just letting it run like that. Partly he saw it try to be quiet at the very beginning. It didn't last long; it became uncomfortable very quickly, anxious and tight. Started getting nervous, making mistakes. So when the chatter started, Jack didn't question whether or not that was wise.

He hasn't seen fit to interrupt, either, until now; "I was going to apologize last night."

"Real big of you. Please understand, I know I'm being harsh, but it's only because Petey's got you half-forgiven already and I don't think you deserved it just so quick and easy as that, so I'm balancing him out. He'd like that too, y'know, if he'd listen when I explain it; he likes balance, see, he likes everything in its place and opposites attracting and yin-and-yang and karma and all that kum-bay-yeah-yeah-yeah stuff."

It talks a lot about Petey, actually. Not only that, but Jack gets the distinct impression that, given half a chance and his tongue back, it might be reciprocal.

Before he can figure out what he thinks of that, Jack is distracted by another of the elaborate lights standing off the wall. Not only does it flash him right back to Valerie, left well behind now, but it's got a toy snake wrapped around it. The stuffed kind, with a friendly triangular mouth and huge round eyes on top of its head. Now, don't get him wrong – they hid from someone climbing a stairwell in a closet dedicated to fully functioning miniature instruments, including the genuine world's smallest violin, complete with thumb-mounted bow. He's seen strange things in a mere few minutes of wandering free around this house.

But the snake stops him. "You sure you know your way around here?"

"I told you before, this is my Mom and Dad's house, so-" It glances back, maybe to glare, making to make sure he understands. It sees the snake and grins wicked. "You think we passed that before."

"Yes."

"Okay, but really think about it. Really think back to the last time you saw Mr Hisses there. Retrace your steps." He does, or anyway he tries to. Jack finds himself thinking very hard and not really getting anywhere. But when he imagines walking backward, when there's a slight backward slip of his foot here in the moment, he imagines his heel bumping the edge of a stair. "Yeah," Quinn nods. "That was the floor above this one. Trust me, we're nearly out. I can smell that freaking canal already."

It leads on, and with only the slightest lingering glance back at the stuffed animal Jack asks, "But _why_? How often do you have prisoners to confuse?"

"Oh, Mister Hisses, and a thousand other things like him, ain't for you. He's for us. Mr Wilder, where you are now, few non-clowns have ever been. This is the _la_ _casa dei divertimenti_ , _das Narrenschiff_. This is the Big Top, and it has been for centuries. So Mr Hisses, and things like –" Without stopping, it unhooks the tie-back of a heavy velvet drape. When it unfolds out across the window it reveals a painted silk panel of stocking-and-suspendered can-can dancers. "Like that, they're not for you. It's just us. Like how you've still got that shoebox full of Atlas' flyers from the old days under the bed –"

"How do you know about that?"

"It's just us, Mr Wilder. This is our roost. When I'm not my clowniest clown self, I come here for a couple of days and puff myself up like a pigeon until I'm all funny again. Or anyway, I used to. Not sure I'm exactly welcome anymore. If I stop being my clowniest clown self for real, I'm blaming you."

It takes the next set of stairs a half-flight ahead of him, waving him down to the midway landing before it disappears further into the dim hall below. There's a faint rushing noise from outside, stronger than the water; boat engines. Suddenly it's not the only one that can smell the canal, the sweet, rancid, metal-edged smog that seeps off it, clinging to ground level like a cloud of poison gas. It rolls over him all once and Jack leans back a little.

At the corner of his eye, something shifts. He leans again, looking this time, and sees the wall next to him open up. Lean back and there's a bare, cool room full of what look like black and white televisions. Lean forward and there's a panelled wall like the rest along the landing.

Beneath him, Quinn is darting back and forth, listening at doors, still checking.

So he leans again, reaching out, and what his fingertips brush against is cooler and smoother than the wall should be. Press a little harder and it begins to turn. Mirrors; strips of them turning on individual pivots. Unless you lean back they reflect the walls. Only from a certain angle can you see between the panels. At first it's a novelty, like any of the rest. It's another cool funhouse joke. But when he looks more closely inside at the guttering monitors, Jack steps forward. He turns the panels enough to slide between two of them and finds himself in the room that barely seemed real before. Someone has been here recently; there are still beads of condensation on a glass of iced cola with an electric blue lip-print on the rim. There's a hard wood chair with a pink and orange fur coat flung over it to make it more comfortable.

The idea of a watcher doesn't really reach Jack, though. He himself became the watcher the moment he stepped between the mirrors.

Most of the screens don't show much happening at all. Dark rooms, plainer yet than this one with the bank of monitors, all the same dull concrete grey. At first glance you'd be forgiven for thinking all the screens show the same image – the same dull concrete boxes.

But on one screen down in the corner, there are two long crates lying open on the floor. In another, a rope protrudes from a hole in the wall. One room has had stones removed from the floor and a trapdoor revealed. In one, the camera faces a mirror. Through the glare and the rough image, Jack can just make out the planes and corners of the door the camera must be mounted on.

And right in the middle, the one that caught his eye, there are two people feeling their way around the edges of another new, familiar puzzle of a space. Their heads turn occasionally, calling to each other, but Jack doesn't need to see their faces. Even in security-camera-grains, he knows their shapes and movements.

He clocks Danny in the first second. It takes him a little longer to accept Henley. Not because he doesn't know her as well, just because he can't believe it's her.

He reaches out, almost touching the screen when Quinn, having realized it had lost him and doubled back, flings itself inside. "Are you serious? We're sort of making an escape here, we don't have time for you to explore."

"These rooms –" As soon as Quinn is within reach he grabs it by the hood and pulls it to him.

"These TVs aren't always on; whoever was watching will be coming b-"

"Where are these rooms? In this building? You have to take me there."

"Like hell I do. I've been in those rooms, never want to see one of those red doors again my whole entire l… Is that Reeves?"

Jack nods. He expects that to be enough. Surely the conversation is over now? He's seen Quinn fight for the people it cares about and believes in. He knows, as best any normal mind can, how it thinks. So now that it has seen Danny and Henley in those bizarre boxes, how can there still be any doubt?

Then again, he's had time to think through all of this. He twists his fist to pull harder on the hood. With casual ease, Quinn's hand flips up flat, the side of it colliding perfectly with where its knee bruised his forearm, so deep he felt it on the bone. Jack lets go, and has his own shirt grabbed in turn, shocking him back to centre, to fierce eyes burning out of painted circles. "I know how you feel. But if we get caught here, they'll shackle you tighter than Houdini ever was. What are you going to do for them when you can't so much as move?"

"So we don't get caught. _Help_ me."

" _No_."

Jack flinches. 'Help me' usually gets results. The simple plea, the appeal to common humanity and values. But the refusal comes back just as simple and plain. By its voice and expression, everything but the words, it mimics him. There's too much of a pause while he recovers but he comes back sharp, "Then just point me in the right direction."

It nods past him at the coat on the chair. "That belongs to my Aunt Collie. She's probably looking for us somewhere else. When she doesn't find us, she'll come back here. You don't want to meet my Aunt Collie in bad circumstances. She's kind of ripped."

"Then point quicker."

"No!" It shoves past him. Now that it's spotted the coat, apparently it warrants investigation. Jack watches while it empties the pockets, supplying itself with a neon bead bracelet and a selection of bright spotted handkerchiefs as well as a cell phone. Through it all, "You can't get them out of there. There are more than a dozen of those red doors, identical, but only one of them is real and opens. For one, I don't know which one it is, and for another it's not a lock you can pick, it's a key code. They are not going _anywhere_ unless Pops says so. And as long as he doesn't have a full set of Horsemen yet, they're not in danger, so …" It trails off when it finds a pocket full of capped makeup crayons, but these it returns reverently to their place. Round about then, Jack's frustration gets the better of him. It happens. It happens to even the best of us, when we watch someone living by rules we don't understand.

Jack stretches out to grab it again. A good hard shake and it'll understand. But it shakes loose of his weaker hand and spins, turning hard against the other arm. Both little hands shove hard at his chest. It's not enough to move him more than a half-step. The shock, more than anything, makes him listen.

"It's okay for you. You'll be locked up somewhere feeling sorry for yourself. But your friends will still be in those crazy rooms with those dumb red doors, and me? Me, what'll I be doing? I'll have to go to May and tell her I didn't just lose you once, but twice. Which means no one will be coming to rescue you, because she will eat my heart with ketchup and fries before I can say another word to tell her where she might find you. Stop me when I start getting things wrong, Wilder."

These things are true. He can hear it now, and they are both aware of that. The mistake he makes is looking again at Danny and Henley on screen. In the centre of the room now, maybe discussing what they've found. She sinks, looking down at her feet, and he reaches out to tip her chin back up.

How is Jack supposed to just leave them?

Quinn sighs. As it leaves, just the dim edges of itself reflected in the monitor glass, "You've got thirty seconds or I'm gone. Man up."

At first the new absence hardly registers. Then the edge of fear begins to creep in. Something about the sound of its boots getting farther away, disappearing down the stairs. It's that left-behind feeling of being a kid, turning three-sixty in the supermarket and realizing you are alone. And, as when Jack was a kid, nothing about being alone is good. Alone, there's nothing he can do.

Under his breath – Quinn is too far gone to hear him anyway – "Okay, wait."

Still transfixed by the monitors, his first step away is backward. Then he remembers that there's no door, just the spinning mirrors. Jack looks round to angle himself between them, and not a second too soon; the mirrors are turned in his direction. They give back the reflection of the stairwell outside, of Quinn vanishing through an iron-riveted door across the hall, and of another door opening up above.

This new clown appears in strips with every stair it descends. First come noiseless white bunny slippers then, above those, fishnet stockings, suspenders, PVC hot pants, the satin blouse of a diner waitress uniform. Above that a set of shoulders that tell Jack this is probably Aunt Collie and Quinn was not exaggerating. The electric blue lipstick is only confirmation.

The last thing Jack sees is a thick-knuckled hand pushing into an afro too pristinely round to be real and emerging with a cigarette and lighter.

He loses sight of her then, repositioning himself behind the mirrors; another stair or two and she would have seen him too. Slow, experimental, he puts out a hand and feels his way along the panel. When his fingertips hook the edge he uses the grip to hold himself flat against it, trying not to press the mirror in front, to make a sound, to give anything away. Hidden halfway through the door he watches Columbina scrape the flint in the cheap plastic lighter over and over. The rasps of it punctuate hard, unfunny muttering. "Damn child…" she growls and without the slightest shimmer of performance, "Ought to break its pointy nose… Teach it not to stick it where it don't belong."

She is still looking down at the cigarette between her neon lips when she bumps the mirrors wide with her hip.

Columbina slides one way, and Jack the other. He only steps out of the room, doesn't make the mistake of taking off too quickly; waiting marble-still with one breath burning at the base of his throat until she shoves the mirrors back to their first deceptive position.

"Stick me in this goddamn watch-room like I wasn't up all night too," she tells herself but Jack misses the rest. He's halfway down the stairs before her first breath of smoke blooms at the edges of the mirrors.

He's crossing the hall, has his hand on the riveted door, before, "Hey! Somebody's been sitting in my chair!"

No more sneaking, no more softened steps. Jack throws the steel door open and doesn't care about the thunder it makes rattling off the wall. Upstairs, the mirrors rattle too. He runs out the door only to stop dead at the edge of the second step; there's nowhere to go, just a narrow path along the edge of the building under an inch of lapping water. There's nothing to see either. No Quinn and no trace to tell how it vanished.

Thirty seconds, it said. _Guess it really meant that_ , but seriously? Thirty seconds? Thirty seconds is just something you say. Not to mention he never saw a watch on Quinn, how could it know? What was he thinking, trusting a clown to keep its word? If Dylan was here, he'd laugh and Jack wouldn't have the heart to stop him. Now he has to run and he doesn't even know if he should go left or right and both directions might just drop off into canals and all of them covered in boats so there's nowhere even to swim if he had to. All of this, all this time and energy, he nearly fell of the ledge, and now it's just going to be over. _Thirty seconds_ , who actually counts out the thir-?

"Wilder! _Today_!"

Right. He turns toward the frustrated cry before he looks or even thinks about it. There isn't time; on the first running step he feels the scratch of Collie's pointed fingernails trying to close on his shirt. On increasingly-closer inspection, barrelling toward it, the nose of a motorboat is visible at the corner of the building. A step beyond that and he can hear the engine idling, ready to go.

His last step, Quinn stands up from sitting by the tiller and grabs him tumbling down in front of it. Somewhere in the middle of the fall, upside down, he sees Columbina scuttling to stop at the canal's edge. She makes another desperate grab, this time for Quinn. It ducks, "Gotta run, Collie!" and drops the spinning propeller back. Cutting the surface it throws up a fan of fetid water that drenches the other clown and leaves her spluttering. "We'll catch up, I promise!" Yelling over the engine and the opening gap between them, "Soon as this is all settled down, we'll catch up!"

Jack is looking back over his shoulder. Just as the water clears, showing him Collie kicking her feet in a rage, losing a sodden bunny slipper to the canal, something thuds into his lap. Turning back, he finds Quinn has thrown him the stolen cell phone.

"Call May."

"Right. Where do I tell her to find us?"

"I'm figuring that out as I go, but just call her. It'll make you feel better."


	43. Chapter 43

You know, a boat is the very best way to see Venice.

They say you ought to wander on foot, spend some time getting lost, really enjoy the dead ends and detours and desperate searches for a bridge that'll take you where you're going. Even the films you see about Venice, even the _horror_ films, romanticise the narrow arches and alleys. Who gives a damn a treacherous patch of slime catches the sole of your shoe and tries to pitch you into a stinking canal? Don't you just giggle and stumble against the support of your lover's arm? That's the image, and you'll hear it repeated all over. But, and this is a very great secret you're being let in on, not a word of it is true.

To reiterate, a boat is the very best way to see Venice. The guidebooks only say that so you don't feel bad about the fact that it is so difficult to _get_ a private boat. The permits and licences are many and hard to come by, reserved for permanent residents who can prove a powerful need. These 'lucky' few spend a lot of time nosing their prows around in hull-to-hull traffic. The canals are governed by a set of rules more complex and pedantic than any road system on the planet, and infringements are not taken lightly. Batting your lashes or folding a few euro in with your licence and registration don't usually work with the local law men here.

Still, if you are of a mind to suffer all the regulations, and you can find yourself some quieter channels in the off-hours, it can only be repeated, a boat is the very best way to see Venice.

Imagine drifting over the milky green water at your own gentle pace. Instead of having to wonder (and dread) what the murky shadows just below the surface might be – they are certainly not fish – you've got the controls to distract you. You can look up all around instead, at architectural genius, sheer walls reaching out of the swamp, narrow windows with _nonna_ 's underwear hung huge and greying over the sills. You can watch lover-tourists, squealing Asian students, waddling cook's-tour Americans, the whole _spectrum_ of human experience (given, of course, that those humans don't happen to actually live here or to have visited for any reason other than a travel agent or a website or the aunt of the best friend of the woman two doors down told them to), stumbling into dead ends and giggling about the spills-not-taken. The glitter on the water might be the afternoon light or camera flashes. You don't have to brush past these so-called people, when you're safe on your boat in the middle of the channel.

Needless to say, Jack and Quinn have other things on their mind. They left the by-laws of the lagoon's by-ways behind with Columbina. As to papers, licences, Quinn would laugh in the face of anybody who dared to ask. Stealing the boat was simple enough. It's done that before and more than once. But stealing the documents? Even finding them in the labyrinthine Funhouse? It would laugh itself unconscious. Wouldn't be a first time for that, either.

No, these easy musings, especially that one about not having to rub up against the miscellaneous miscreants descending on this exquisite corpse like so many vultures, come from none other than Chase McKinney.

It is, in fact, the venerable House of Clown that he is drifting past right now. Still following Atlas' signal, see. The quarry may no longer be in possession of the antenna, but it hasn't gone far, and has kept pinging clear and true all across this ancient nation. Chase would call it the wonder of modern technology. He's not so deluded, nor even enough enamoured with the pretence of innocence, not to note the irony – the wonder and the peril are the same thing. Amusement stretches his grin until his teeth just slightly part.

Chase kills off his engine and focuses on the windows. If he'd been a little quicker getting here, he would have seen Jack hanging off the edge, climbing back inside when he found Quinn. As it is, all he sees are the two raised sashes. And, a little more perplexingly, a window or two which are barred. There is no apparent sequence to them; not a line down the side of the building, not shoulder-by-shoulder along one floor. Rather they seem to jump and trickle from each other, bouncing around the corner of the building, spreading out only to come tight together again. Stranger still, these windows are blocked behind the bars, blacked out matte and lightless, without even the texture of brick.

And when you are paying this much attention, there's more to see. To the glancing, or idiot, eye, the Funhouse's exterior gives no clue as to what guild may be gathering within. A little more care, however, you'll see traces of paint, primary red-yellow-and-blue, here and there on the stones. And where the gutters and downspouts are, you can still see where gargoyles once spat streams unchannelled. All those little demons are still in place, but the tradition of terror was never present; these guys are pulling faces, sticking out their tongues, crossing their eyes, mooning.

Look a little lower; look at the first floor, where the canal reaches green into warbling, lethal black under the shadow of an arched colonnade. The feature itself is rare; most such galleries have collapsed or been replaced with sturdier flat supports as the city gradually disappears back into the swamp it grew out of. This alluring and traitorous little alcove has been exquisitely protected, to still be standing. The keystone above each arch bears a grotesque face, carved deep and weathered to shadows in the hollows of the cheeks, the sockets of the eyes. There are half-faces with enormous hooked noses, there are Shar Pei wrinkles, eyes squeezed up into crescents by the eternal grin beneath them.

You'll see these in the guidebooks, too. You'll see them in gold and enamel being sold at eye-watering prices at the oldest tourist traps in the city. These are the Venetian masks, and some of them have remained unchanged for centuries. They carry names like Il Dottore, like Pedrolino…

Like Pantalone, but Chase doesn't get so far along as to see that particular mask. Rather he sees a grey smudge of dirty white in the shadows and finds, upon closer inspection, that it resolves into a face.

The lopsided red slash of a mouth opens. "Hey, I know you!", a parody of street-corner braying, the slow joy of a loser who, even sober, seems to be one drink down. It is a perfect imitation. "You're off TV!" It's just a opening gambit, a little flash to snatch attention. Chase sits back grinning and waits to see where this might go. "What brings you to this soon-to-be Atlantis?"

"Ah, _you_ know… Culture, a love of the arts… A searing need for revenge so petty and vicious even I feel just a _teeny_ bit guilty about it?"

"Guilty?" This king amongst fools shuts his shark-like eyes, sways his head with disdain. "Guilty? Guilt, Mr Kinney, is a fairy tale. Guilt is an excuse you give yourself if your heart isn't in your dream. Heart or spine, one or the other or both. And you don't look like a man dying of heart failure."

What a charming and affirming thing to say, and them still practically strangers! Why, Chase just can't keep the warm-and-fuzzies from spreading out all over his body. He's a nice guy, this clown hanging back in the dark beneath an aged Venetian mansion. He's got a kind way about him. Puffed up, smiling brighter, "Spine's pretty sturdy too."

Here is a rare thing happening now – a meeting of like minds. Neither of them pushes the agenda, it hasn't even been discussed, but there is a sensation of coalescence, of two people thinking the same thing. What the thing may be is irrelevant. This moment of shared consciousness knows no morality; that the thing is vile and nasty carries no real weight.

By the time Chase has drifted past just one more pillar, he has the mooring rope in his hand. It is ready to be thrown even before Panty speaks. "Seeing we share a purpose, it would be remiss of me not to invite you in. It'd be dumb, too, seeing you're right here some-way-I-need-to-get-to-the-bottom-of anyhow."

What a great guy. Check out the honesty on that guy. Why, almost as much as Chase likes his thinking, he likes the sincere and candid nature of his expression.

This could be the beginning of a beautiful something or other…

* * *

While the discovery of the boarded up windows had _some_ use for Chase, even if only that they slowed him down enough for Panty to reach the back door, it did absolutely nothing for Danny and Henley. Worse, in fact, than nothing, because it added another layer of frustration, and you must believe it when you are told, they have quite enough of those. They are pretty much smothered in layers of frustration already.

That was two or three rooms ago. They wasted time examining the screens, inches thick, filling the frames, and the places where bolts are countersunk into them. The bolt-heads sit flush. That was something – at least they couldn't blame themselves for not seeing them previously.

They doubled back.

Not the easiest process; by their instinctual internal mapping they would venture the networked cells run at least three abreast, over five floors and the submerged basement. The trapdoor in the ceiling of the first room was barely a beginning.

They festered for over an hour in the identical room above before they found another exit. That one was a flap no larger than a dog-door at chest height. The other side of the wall was greased, and the floor you'd fall to rough as sandpaper. Henley wears the proof of this as a dark, bloody graze on the heel of her hand, and proof of its severity in the reddened patches down the seam of her pants, the places she pressed when it wouldn't stop bleeding. The room after that bulged with umbrellas of all shapes and sizes, and some of them with exposed, sharpened spokes. More than one was a long thin rapier in a paper thin disguise. It was only when they found the one which was a crowbar wrapped in umbrella fabric that they started taking the slabs off the floor.

They got through that room with no more than scratches first time round. Thanks to doubling-back, Danny is applying pressure to a gouge that runs from the side of his wrist almost to the elbow. He tried to ignore it at first. But when the red wouldn't be held, when his cuff couldn't absorb anymore and the trickle cut a line down the web of his thumb, they sat down where the first drop fell. Like two kids cutting class, sitting on cold stones with their backs to the wall.

"This is clowns?" Henley says. She is addressing a spot somewhere in the middle distance, eyes chasing a mote of plaster dust from the last place they tried to chip a door-hinge out of the wall. Unimpressed, unsmiling, "I don't get the joke."

"Maybe it's existential humour," Danny tries. She glances round and her brow furrows. Thinking she doesn't understand. "Like the jokes in a Goddard mov-?", but she didn't want an explanation. She wanted, and takes hold of his wrist now to get her wish, him to raise his cut arm up above his heart.

Muttering, "You know my French sucks."

" _C'est pourquoi tu aurais dû être à Paris. Tu aurais aimé là-bas._ "

"Screw you and your conditional-perfect tense…" With both hands occupied, he can't put his arm around her. She leans in against his shoulder anyway. "I think we're missing something with these rooms. How many have we been in, nine?"

"Eight."

"So even if there are no more than three on every floor, we're not even halfway. And what have we got?"

"Injuries."

"I don't think this place is designed to keep us in."

After too long a pause, "Henley, I love you, but-"

She jerks her head to hit his arm and explains – the principle is very much the same as putting a show together. Eighty-nine percent of people who have paid money for a ticket will, short of a medical emergency, stay to the end no matter how they feel about the performance itself. And selling tickets is less about the production and more about the advertising, the location, the sell. The font of the small print on the lobby poster has more bearing on sales than the magic tricks do. Working casino hotels, sales are virtually guaranteed.

By which comparison she means, there is no way they're getting out of these goddamn concrete boxes. "Red doors or no red doors, let's just take that as read."

"Hang on a sec," he says. It is his very most reasonable voice and Henley rolls her eyes. Talking like he needs to calm her when he's the panicked one, "For all we know the very next room we walk into, the door just swings."

There's no use talking to him when he's like this. "For the sake of making my point, pretend for a second we know."

The point, then, of the show itself is to ensure that those eighty-nine percent, and the other eleven too, leave satisfied. Don't give the eleven percent the opportunity to walk out. Don't give the eighty-nine percent anything to grouse about as they spill into the lobby afterward. The point of the show itself is for no one to ever realize they paid for their seat.

"They want us to keep scrabbling," Danny mumbles. With slow understanding, feeling his way along the unfamiliar sentiment, the logical nonsense of it, "We're not getting out but so long as these rooms keep us busy, we don't figure that out. Wait, do you think we're being…?"

He stops short of the word 'watched', but Henley still hears it. It's in his sudden tension and the way his eyes start to race around the room again, another scan based on another new discovery. It is strongest in the concerted effort he makes to disguise all of this. "Almost certainly."

"It's okay." Said so firm and assertive, Henley knows he isn't talking to her. But Danny chokes; all the reasonable serenity he can craft is not enough right now to deaden the fear. It crackles electric under every word. Henley reaches for his wrist again, though this time her fingers climb it to wind through his. "I told you before, there's a plan B. There's back-up. It's just that with no way of knowing how long we were out, it's hard to say-"

"Wait. What did you tell me? When?"

"Your hotel room, after Rebecca got arrested. I was on the phone with…. With you unconscious next to me. That'll explain the blank stare, I guess."

Now, Henley would never willingly laugh at Danny. Not least because he takes everything so personally and it's not worth the arguments. These days they only get very brief moments with each other (provided, of course, they haven't been locked in a warren of bizarre locked-room-mysteries by clowns). They have to make the most of their time, and there's an awful lot of time to be lost by laughing at Danny.

But she doesn't _mean_ to. It wells up at the base of her throat before she could even say why. Then the image crystallizes. Her lying there limp, down for the count, dead to the world and _he is_ still _talking._

Does it ever end? Will they find him someday sitting by her grave and still chattering? And not to realize, to have to explain it to himself…

She'd never _willingly_ laugh at him, but it's been a long day.

A smirk breaks into a grin before finally the laughter has its way. Taking root deep inside Henley, it grows up out of her, so that before long she is no longer in control. It's not so bad, though. In fact, now that she's inside this joyous noise, she realizes how little control she had to begin with. It's fine, everything is fine. Henley starts to feel better, and then to even feel good.

And it's round about then, with Danny repeating her name, asking her to stop, that they hear the applause.

Right outside the nearest red door, and not just one pair of hands. Listen close and you'll detect a fat, sweaty pair, meaty muscle, old bones, and the quick, seal-like clapping of an idiot. This last is a second behind the others; not one of the gang but a grinning imitator. Scattered through the noise, little cheers, whistles. "Bravo!" and "One down!" and something muffled as if the speaker were wearing a mask.

"One to go."

Then, as the applause fades, the imitator chirps up bright, "I have to hand it to you, Mr Pants; you know what you're doing here. That one really sounded like she'd lost it."

"Ah, shucks… Don't flatter me; she ain't done yet."

There's a little more talk, the voices drifting away. The watchers seem to be dispersing, but Danny and Henley are both stuck back at the voice of the guest. The man who just had such a potent demonstration of the clowns' power spoke with a Southern twang they are both well acquainted with, and with a less familiar lilt. It had an off-key music that sets the teeth and the tensions all on edge, and the ends of each sentence eked out long and whining after they were spoken, seeping through the gaps of a grin.

The sudden rush of her own pulse and Henley plummets back to herself. Quick and clipped, without doubt, "That was Chase McKinney."

"It's okay." Any lingering delirium dies on Danny's constant, desperate denials. "It's okay, don't worry about it. We'll be okay."


	44. Chapter 44

To speak the name of this building would be a thing akin to blasphemy. To most it is unknown, anonymous. Passing along the canal – there is no dry entrance – it appears to be any other crumbling palazzo. The door itself is unassuming, inelegant black steel once graffiti stained and now scarred with the paint remover. But arrive here on the right night and your boat will have to get in line, and you'll have to have your invite in your hand. Some of the most exclusive parties in this most exclusive of cities are hosted here. Lavish dinners, heavily themed, guests dressed as Roman gods served by winged waiters, birds waiting on angels worthy of Vatican ceilings, zephyrs swung criss-crossing by acrobats. The masquerade here, during Mardi-Gras, has a guest list that reads like a golddigger's letter to Santa Claus.

In short, on the other side of that forbidding door, the two-storey entrance hall blooms out marble and mosaic to the foot of the stairwell spilling down from galleries most often haunted by masked millionaires. The chandelier is seventeen feet wide and falls like rain suspended frozen.

What almost nobody knows – not the oligarchs or the It girls, the models, politicians, business moghuls, mistresses, the occasional clergyman – is that their favourite venue is owned by none other than Il Dottore, our own Doc of the Commedia.

For those who are quick and smart enough to wonder, you can look as closely as you like. You won't find any hidden cameras or microphones. That is not to say this place is not a great source of information for our clown friends, just that you won't find them.

All of this and more has already crossed Lula's mind, on its way to her mouth. She managed a running commentary all the way from the door, following Petey upstairs to a side room full of gilded furniture and white fur pillows. She got another four minutes chatter out of simply being told that it is generally used as a sort of green room for performers. Shirley Bassey once sat on the same chaise-longue she is currently perched on the edge of. If you don't think Lula got another couple of minutes out of that, and barely a breath to break it up, you don't know her at all.

But they've been here longer than that. And without obvious visual prompts, she tends to find herself exploring some pretty wild tangents.

For instance, as we find her now; "I always think I've made that movie up when I remember it, it just doesn't sound like it could be possible, how does that even occur to somebody, like, Clint Eastwood and an orangutan, I mean, c'mon. Who came up with that?"

Lula is not entirely sure how she's gotten to this conversational pass. She is way deeper into her speed-talking stream than ever before, being pinballed around in rapids she has only ever seen from a distance.

This began when Jack called. They spoke for a matter of seconds before Petey and Quinn took over the line. This was entirely fair – they arranged to meet here, Petey conducting his part of the conversation by pressing buttons in Morse – but for Lula it wasn't enough. Just hearing his voice, it could have done some much more for her if there'd been more time. As it was, so brief, she can't be sure she didn't imagine it.

The really great thing is, Petey doesn't seem to mind. He hasn't even tuned out, is still reacting and following. It's rare and very validating. Trouble is, Lula doesn't want to be validated. She wants to be _stopped_.

Somebody has always stopped her before. They stop her out of frustration or kindness or out of simple pragmatism, knowing she needs to be stopped, but they've stopped her. Really, she's terribly disappointed in Petey. They might not know each other well, and a verbal interruption might well be out of the question but surely he could think of something. It's not even a question of whether or not he's comfortable with her; he left her in no doubt of that with the hug at the balcony door. So really there's no excuse for letting her get this far gone. She'd be angry, if she had any space left in her mind for the feeling to form, but the fact is that these are her thoughts and they are running at the same speed as her still active mouth and, oh, dear God, the raging relief when Petey _finally_ reaches over to tap her shoulder, she could cry except she's talking still, stumbling now like trying to stop short from a sprint.

"…feel like they probably already _had_ a trained orangutan, rather than training one for – what? What is it?"

 _Tell me something gentle like that it's okay and I can stop now, that I shouldn't be so scared._ _Have I really been talking ever since Jack called?_ _Ask me why I'm losing it when it's nearly over now because when you ask me I'll realize I don't know and then it'll be fine, but until then-_

But he doesn't. He shows her the now familiar flick of his hand that means he doesn't like something. Then, like charades, the rolling fist for 'movie'.

"No. Uh-uh, not possible. That movie is the _funniest_ thing, how can you not like it?"

On the notepad – all but gone in the last few hours – _2 far-fetched_.

"You are a clown, and I am a magician. We are sitting at the home of a further clown, who you tell me is currently missing in action, awaiting the arrival of a further magician and an even further clown. There is some bizarre web of kidnap and conspiracy going on around us." She was one sentence into this dismissal when he began to write again, smiling. By the time she has finished, and therefore negated any argument he could possibly have, he has finished. She takes the paper already smug.

 _Orangutans are peaceful._ _Wouldn't hang out with bare-knuckle fighters in bars._ _Feel sorry for Clyde_.

Her smile builds slowly. It starts to break into laughter. Then it threatens to subside and Petey grabs the book back fast. _Clyde deserves better_ is what tips Lula over the edge and leaves her giggling.

It reminds her of something Dylan said. Those trains to Rome, after Basel when she caught him out lying about the clowns and what they knew and he didn't. He knew he was wrong. He tried admitting it but it doesn't come easy to him. Then he tried to soften her with reasoning, justifications. Dylan told her more about clowns that Lula ever knew there was to tell. And in amongst it, something he kept returning to with all the obsessive clarity of true fear, he told her over and over, "What they do is an art, and it is in everything they do, and every breath they take." He kept saying it. Kept saying it like it was supposed to be a bad thing.

But the sound of a boat motor, closer than the general traffic, stops her laughing just as sudden as her speech was stopped.

She jumps up and rushes to the tall narrow window. "It's him. Them, I mean, Quinn too, Quinn's fine," but by now she's already running for the door. Petey has to step up and take firm hold of her arm. A gentle sort of warning; calm down. Anything could happen. Jack and Quinn could have been followed, could be under duress, anything. After the last few days, there's no trust. Even something that seems so basic and beautiful, they have to be careful.

All very well telling her to be careful, and Lula knows it's all very sensible. But right now, her capacity to comply is limited by the leap in her heart. She rushes ahead of Petey back out across the cavernous hall, is already opening the door when Petey steps up behind to show her the sliding panel she might have used to check the coast was clear. "Oh, it's fine, they're fine-"

The sound of her voice through the open door brings Jack's answering, "Lula?"

It ought to be a beautiful moment. For the most part it is. It is ruined only very slightly by a sequence of quick, hollow thuds, a yelp from Quinn. Honestly, Lula doesn't take much notice. She doesn't even know what happened, until she sees it over Jack's shoulder. This is after she's kissed him, of course, and after she's hissed all sorts of vicious things in his ear for scaring her, so there has been a little time. Petey has reached the boat by the doorstep. He's crouched down close, looking over the edge at Quinn. Fallen, all awkward angles, in the puddle at the boat's base. It shoves itself up just enough for its eyes to burn into Lula. "He dropped me because he ran to you, May. You all might think it's crazy-romantic, but I blame you."

Petey points at it, then cups his hands to mean 'boat'. He seems baffled by this, shrugging, wild gestures of incomprehension. "Yes, I _know_ I am in a boat. I am trying not to think about me being in a boat. I am trying not to be in a boat. I was all but out of a boat until Wilder got all Wuthering Heights. Petey, stop looking at me and help me not-be-in-a-boat." It wraps both pipe-cleaner arms around Petey's neck and allows itself to be hauled up and hustled through the door. It doesn't let go, though. It stays swinging, hanging from him like a pendant. Petey seems resigned to this. He walks on, both hands by his sides.

Whether or not she understands its distress, Lula can see that it's genuine. And with Jack's arm around her she is in perfect position to turn her elbow out into his ribs. "For somebody who's scared of boats," he begins, and Lula rolls her eyes it's such a paltry, oblique sort of apology, "You were pretty good with that one."

But it seems it is incapable of forming a cogent answer. Petey's hands fold around behind his back and give enough for Lula to read, "It's not boats, it's water." When she finds Jack staring, "I've learned a little. I've had tonnes of time. Do you know how long you were gone before Petey and me knew _anything_?"

Both Jack and Quinn, with the same blank honesty, "No."

And now, come to think of it, now she's on the spot, Lula couldn't put a number of hours on it either, "Well… it was… it was _time_ , okay? You don't know what that was like, it was brutal."

This, finally, is when Quinn unlatches itself from Petey. There's the slightest squelch when its shoes meet the floor. It is quiet and earnest, taking his wrist to pull him away. "Okay, we need to leave these two kids to catch up. Us two kids need to catch up too, but in a different room; we need to talk about Dad."

Petey consents to this. But before he'll go anywhere, he steps up to the door of the gold and white parlour and opens it with a flourish. He ushers Lula in with as deep and reverent a bow as if she were one of the royalty who have, on occasion, walked these same halls. And yes, maybe it is crazed caricature, but somehow she can feel the heart behind it, and that it's real.

There is art, in what they do. They just express it differently.

"What was that?" Jack whispers to her, while the door is still being obsequiously shut behind them.

"He says I'm his favourite. And before you even ask, yes, I trust him."

"Oh, no way him and Quinn are dangerous. They don't know enough."

"If that's how you gauge it, you and me must be the safest two people on the planet."

For just a second, Jack agrees with her. He sits down heavily in front of her, sudden so that he drops out of her vision for a moment. Like it drags him down; the weight of all this time apart, having nothing to show for it, it's murder. Lula knows this because she feels it too. But because she knows _him_ , she knows there's more. Jack takes it hard when it happens this way. He blames himself so he won't be surprised when others blame him. Times like this, ending up with nothing to offer, he wonders if he's still just 'the kid' after all.

He'll apologise. Her stomach knots at the thought, but he will. Lula will tell him not to bother. Never apologize, when he wasn't in control of the situation. Don't say sorry, say practical things.

This time, however, he does something different. He kicks through it. Even as Lula stands biting her lip, looking for some way to talk him back up, Jack finds his own. He reaches up for her hand and brings her down next to him. "We know plenty," he tells her. "But you start."

"Shirley Bassey once sat right where you are just now?" He even laughs. Lula couldn't be prouder. And it's not conciliatory, not an offer, not something she says to cheer him up, when she says, "Dylan's on his way. I actually thought he'd get here before _you_. Top _that_ , man."

"When he gets here, we can tell him where to find Danny and Henley."

"Wow. Way to top. I'm impressed." Playing, she turns to shove his shoulder. Jack is counting under his breath, backward from five. She doesn't understand right away, but as he reaches zero, "Wait, _Henley_?!"

He's ready to answer, echoing her shock. But even as his mouth opens there's a crash in another room down the hall. As one they're on their feet again, opening the door just enough to listen, and then enough to look out around the frame. Another thud and Quinn's voice suddenly raised. "It ain't funny! Not one line of one bit of the whole act is funny!"

"Oh my God, clowns get angry. Clowns freak out," Lula breathes.

A shudder creeps up the back of Jack's neck. "It's like the first time you hear your parents fight…"


	45. Chapter 45

"It ain't funny! Not one line of one bit of the whole act is funny!" Petey and Quinn are a little farther away than you might think. They'd die of shame, frankly, if they thought anybody was listening. These two consummate professionals won't even clean off their make-up without a securely locked door between them and any civilians. Acoustics are the only reason they can be heard way back at the gilt room. They chose to talk in this long, soaring corridor, a hollow marble artery, entirely solid, no softness to kill the echoes. The gallery runs the whole length of the building, with enormous windows streaming swimming pools of green-tinged light, reflected from a much grander canal than the one that hides the entrance. Its pale and ancient opulence, however, never really registered. They had too much to catching up to do.

Petey almost wishes there was more. As hard as it was to hear some of the things Quinn had to share, and as hard as it was tell some of the things he's learned himself, he'd do it all again rather than watch his little pal rage.

That's how he thinks of Quinn; _little pal_. Big fella and little pal. Times like this, though, he's reminded of certain animals, the kind that protect themselves by flinging their limbs around and rising up to their full height, by making noise and changing their colour (its white make-up looks pink, the face beneath is so red). They make themselves so much bigger than they really are when they're afraid.

"Petey, _help_ me. What do I do with this? What is even happening? Is it a test? That crossed my mind, did it cross yours? But if it's a test, are we failing, or are Cap and Collie failing?" As he approaches, arms held out, it backs away a step. "Don't. Don't-don't- _don't,_ I can see you coming, Pedrolino, and I'm telling you, don't hug me right now, not when we've got real problems. Big, external problems we can't fix. I don't want to calm down. I want to stay up. I want to wind up and up and up until I'm as crazy as the situation is and then everything will become clear. And you can write down everything I say while I'm crazy and _then_ I'll come down and we'll discuss the crazy answers, okay?"

Maybe you can see now why Petey had no problem not only listening to Lula's chatter, but keeping up. It's called 'practice'. Like having the radio on in the background; even when it fades to static you can fill in the blanks.

When he goes for the hug again he's faster and won't take no for an answer. Quinn squirms against his chest, muttering denials. It stops only when it almost dislodges its baseball cap. Then it falls still, head turned to the side. One arm crooks up over his to pull the peak straight again. Smothering itself on his bicep is less intentional, but it takes the opportunity to muffle a squeal of frustration. They never did mean to scared Jack and Lula – those poor magicians have enough to worry about, including each other – and they aren't to know it's already too late.

"Where's Mom?" Quinn keens. "I picked this place because I was so sure he'd be here. Petey, what's happening to us when we don't even know where Doc is?"

Petey has never missed speech as much as he thought he would when he first lost his tongue. He misses it now, however, because he has already shrugged and opened out his hands and the signing – the sad salute of 'unknown', the self-deprecation of pulling zero-shaped fingers away from his own head – is getting old. What wouldn't he give to change it up just once, just to say, _I don't know, bud, but we'll be okay_ , rather than picking around the sentiment?

It should be noted, this and the other few times he would have cut off a hand to have his tongue back, they've all been like today. They have always come when nothing he could _do_ was enough. Not that he was ever great with words. If he'd stop and think about it, he'd realize he's got nothing to say to Quinn anyway. It would just be nice to have the option, that's all. To have something else to try.

But maybe the worst is over now. When the object of its rage isn't around to be berated, Quinn doesn't generally like to waste energy on it. Rather it puts its anger away to simmer and concentrate and become truly potent, until such times as it can be expressed more effectively. This in itself can be a little scary for Petey. Just try to imagine, when even the little yelling and flailing it did here in private put a flutter of panic through his heart, what it's like to see that in public, and ten times worse, all wild, and to be expected to intervene.

Still, he hopes that's what is happening when Quinn wriggles free of his arms and settles in the deep sill of the window. Then he sees the quiet, pouting way it looks out at the water and knows better. All he can do is sit down across from it in the other side of the ledge and wait.

"What do you think they would do?" it mutters eventually. Nodding at the door, meaning Jack and Lula, "Them or the rest of them. If it was Shrike, and all of a sudden they just couldn't be sure of him anymore, what would they do? I mean, would they walk away, would they fight him? Would they be scared? What do you think they'd do, big fella?"

He knows better than to suggest they go and ask. The moment they are no longer alone, they have to be back on form. Call this an emergency if you want, it doesn't matter. Not knowing whether they still have a family or not, whether they're still welcome in the circle, their dedication is all they've got right now. They're not just clinging because their mentors seem to have let go, but because it comforts them, like prayers said in the ashes of a forest fire. Serious questions, then, are as much off the cards as they have ever been, and probably more so.

Besides, the answer is unlikely to do them any good. For all of this autopsy, Petey and Quinn both made up their minds back in Rome. The moment El Capitan turned out to be less than the benevolent god they always believed in, their trust was broken. Maybe faith survived that, maybe denial made them come up with excuses and possibilities – the 'test' Quinn mentioned, for instance – but nothing they really believed.

Petey sighs, knowing that if his thoughts have chased themselves into a dead end, so have Quinn's. It looks from the canal to him, and the next question is earnest. The next question wants an answer. It asks, "Are we with _them_ now? Are we riding horses?" Petey flounders. Where you or I have 'um' and 'well' to fall back on, he is denied all of these stalling techniques. Even the usual empty hand gestures you might make, Petey always finds they wind up meaning something. Nonsense, most of the time, but not always; he learned the hard way to be especially careful when turning down _any_ sort of proposition. And now, because the question comes from Quinn, he is denied still more; it sees his shoulders start to tighten before he is even aware of it. "Don't shrug at me. I'm dead serious, big guy, I couldn't take it right now. Just tell me if I'm right in saying that. I'm with you on this one, okay? Wherever that might be and wherever it takes us, I'm with you. But this is what it comes down to – are we now Rodeo Clowns?"

He smiles; any other day he'd outright laugh, and on a good day they've got a great western bit worked out from years ago. Audience or not, they'd play it out on a heartbeat. Today it is enough that it makes them smile.

He digs in his pocket and finds a crumpled sheet of paper. Covered in inconsequential little things from the last twenty-four hours, they make no sense out of context but Petey remembers what all of them meant. _Im sure rabbits forgive u._ _Never red it._ _Chashere cat._ _Then wat happened?_ , and this last has got little pencil dots all around it from being asked over and over.

In an empty corner, with a broken pen Quinn struggles out from three layers deep in its clothes, _Yippee-kay-yay_.

"Yeehaw… We're actually gonna die this time."

 _Not die no way._ _Be okay._ _Clever Quinn._

"Well, that's true but what if I need you to punch something?"

 _Punch_ you _soon._

"Alright, I'm sorry, I'm so – Oh!" It perks up in an eye-blink, pointing out the window. "Look, a new friend!" Unlike everything else in the past few days, it's nothing to worry about. It's no more or less than Quinn says; a friend. On a crowded vaporetto, crawling in traffic, a little boy has his nose pressed to the glass, watching the two strange creatures in the window. Quinn waves wildly, "Hello, friend."

It gets to its feet right there on the sill. By then Petey is already up behind it. Both of his hands are already in position when Quinn reaches back. He pushes up at the same time it boosts itself, and by the combined length of their arms bounces up effortless to stand on his shoulders.

It should be said, 'effortless' is the wrong word. But there's none that Petey knows of, in sign or English or his long-lost mother tongue, which accurately expresses an act which has the _appearance_ of costing nothing, whatever tremble might vibrate in your shoulders, whatever weight is pressing down on them. The mad equilibrium of Quinn's pretending to wobble and never really losing its balance is a thing closer to ballet than any other discipline. And on the creeping boat the little boy laughs and claps and points them out to his mother.

The jam clears and the water-bus pulls away. Quinn dismounts, but stays hanging for a second on Petey's shoulders. Maybe making up for the hug it broke before. Maybe ready for it now. "That was nice," it sighs. "That helped." Petey nods his agreement. For a moment everything was as it ought to be again. If they had any doubts left, they are gone now that the adepts have remembered how they should really feel in their work.

And this one moment of _better_ , like all similar moments of late, is shattered. This time by a squeal, and Lula calling something out, and then the pounding rush of her feet. Petey takes off to stop her barrelling straight out into the canal or worse, into Panty, Valerie, Columbina…

Quinn follows, yelling for an explanation. For just three steps, Petey turns, backward travel never slowing him down, _She runs before she thinks._ _Crazy._ _Get us all caught_.

It is sad that neither of them is quick enough to keep the perpetual blood-pressure elevator that is Lula May from rushing to the door, reassuring to find Jack too left a step behind and just as frustrated. "Lula, _wait_. Is he even alone?" Petey furiously points again at the hatch on the door but, since no one is looking, no one can hear him. By then May is outside. Muffled in the soft thump of her grabbing needy, relieved hold of someone, "Dylan! I'm so glad you're okay. I'm glad there's _someone_ who is okay, and especially glad that it's you."

On instinct, Quinn takes a hasty step back. It draws away into a slight shadow just shy of the sightlines from outside. It's not just for the sake of the running gag that Petey draws back behind the door to demonstrate again how the hatch works. They both know, very simply and honestly, the sort of reaction they'll probably get. They're just trying not to jump out on the guy, is all. Fear is one thing. The terror of a sudden shock is quite another. They can do without alienating their adopted leader, seeing as they're going to be rodeo clowns now.

They hang back waiting, side by side like scolded children. Listening in on the reunion, on the stuck-record-repeat of Shrike making sure his people are okay, asking over and over again until they stop trying to tell him anything else and just make him sure of it.

Not so long ago Petey and Quinn associated Venice with the same sort of welcome. They are maybe not at their brightest and best, maybe just in the act of reaching for each other's hands, when Lula points them out over Shrike's shoulder. By the time he turns, however, they are ready, bouncing again. Graciously covering up for the shudder that rattles his bones, Quinn breezes, "Howdy!" and Petey's finger-guns back it up admirably. "Me and this here other no-good outlaw-clown done saved one of your horsies each, pardner. So what do you say? Do we get a pass?"

Shrike hates this.

It is one of those little-known facts that becomes very obvious when you really think about it – clowns are good at reading people. Anybody can make you cry if they're willing to be cruel enough. But to make somebody laugh? When in all the world there are no two people with an exactly identical sense of humour, to be able to make anybody you come into contact with laugh? That is something else entirely. Add to that the intensive training that clowns _such as these_ receive, at a very early stage in their indoctrination to the art, and their expertise should be no great surprise.

But it wouldn't take a child of four to see how much Dylan Shrike hates this. They do what they can to help him. They stand back again, drop as much of their act as decency will allow. Still, there's that tightening in his jaw, there's that terrible burning behind the eyes that comes from a skipping heart.

It's Jack who steps up. One hand resting on Dylan's shoulder, leaning close to say, "Just being totally practical? Walking round their HQ is the closest thing you can have to a nightmare without actually being asleep. We're gonna need them."

Then, at his other ear, so that both shoulders have angels and nothing can be wrong, Lula adds, "There's also the fact that Jack would still be stuck there if it wasn't for these guys." She waits a patient moment for Dylan to thaw. After that, an impatient moment. After that, a moment with her foot tapping and she concludes more softly, "Also I would very likely be dead?"

"That was you?" Shrike points and Petey nods. Nods quick at first, then long and deep as his eyes fix in mock-astonishment at the outstretched hand now waiting for his. He stares so long that Quinn jabs his ribs. Then, very carefully, he extends his own grubby white glove and feels his wary way into Dylan's handshake. Down by his side, through a grudging smile, Quinn mutters, "Teacher's pet…" It also produces, from a low-down cargo pocket, a plastic freezer bag with a few sandwich crumbs still clinging in the corners. When Petey withdraws his hand – with the same reverent disbelief as he gave it – it slips the bag over it so as to remove the now-blessed glove without ever letting its own unhallowed hands sully it. This whole process takes place perfectly seriously, and beneath its announcing, "Those two Horsemen you can't account for? The good news is we know where to find them. The bad news is we have no way of getting to them."

"It's true, Dylan, I saw the place. It's not just that they have it wired, it… It messes with your head. It's-"

Everything Jack is saying is correct. Petey could vouch for it. But, as on so many other occasions, it's hard for him to cut in. Quinn would translate for him, but it's got news of its own to share. Besides, Quinn has just been home, to Mom and Dad's, to the Funhouse. It knows better than him. Petey takes the opportunity bestowed upon him by the handshake; he carries on the bit. Maybe it's going on too long now. Certainly it's about to stop being funny any second. But really, nobody's paying that much attention.

So, still under the pretence of being transfixed, of his whole world beginning and ending with his one so-sacred hand, Petey drifts. He leaves them regrouping in the cavernous hallway, the three magicians gathered with Quinn hanging back, delicately interjecting where it can. As delicately, anyway, as it is capable of – "I really need it said and you all to believe that our Moms, which is to say Doc, ain't got nothing to do with this." Its eyes follow him out the still-open door, but Petey has no qualms leaving it to fend for itself. He only needs a minute or so to get his centre back.

He stands to one side on the foot-wide lip, with the canal seeping in grey at the toes of his sneakers. It doesn't bother him. Quinn would be climbing the wall to escape by now, but Petey has found that you can never really stay all dry in Venice. Even in the middle of the city, in the narrow alleys and over bridges, you might never touch water, but it gets into you. You feel that damp creak in your bones, that slight algal slime, like a sheen of sweat, under your chin and at your elbows and the backs of your knees.

You never get away from the lights, either. Little flashes off the river, off high-up windows angling light down into the dull grey crevasses, little lights everywhere. They catch you off guard. One gets him now and he flinches. As he turns his head away, another bounces off a lantern bracketed to the opposite wall and he flips his head back again. Another flash from the first source and he concludes there is more to this than simple nature.

Trying to focus, the lights keep him from gaining a clear picture. A figure approaches in a boat, flipping the lethal shards of sun off something glass or metal. A man, with a familiar stance, a tip of the head that suggests wide and slightly loopy eyes staring down a long nose. The shape of the shadow has meaning to Petey, but the lights keep him from nailing it down.

But this is too important. Like that voice he heard beneath the stage in Rome; if he'd only known immediately that it had been El Capitan, they would have known so much sooner that something was amiss. Petey can't say for sure that it would have helped, but the idea that it might has been preying on him. This, then, he won't allow to go by. He won't let it happen again. The boat is getting close now, and like music from a passing car he catches the edges of a breathy, childish laugh.

Chase McKinney. This time it doesn't go by him. This time he knows on the out-breath what he heard on the in.

Chase McKinney. That's his first thought. His second is the door and the people inside, to close them all in and get them out another exit, secretly, to protect him, to lock the enemy out and make the friends safe.

You can decide for yourself why he does no such thing. Petey stands off the wall, looking head on at the boat. But he makes no move to get in out of the way. Standing with his arms hanging limp, and nothing on his face but a dim confusion. You may well ascribe it to the flashes of light. _Something wrong_ , Petey keeps telling himself. _Something off._ _Something not just exactly spotty-dog-spot-on-hundred-percent-perfecto-bingo_. He's not even flinching now, and the light is sweeping back and forth with pendulum regularity across his docile eyes.

The boat glides by without ever slowing down. Only the shadow behind the flashes changes; he stands up, and as he passes with the tips of two fingers held together he presses hard right between Petey's eyes. By then it's almost enough to knock him over.

As the clown sways and staggers the shadow whispers gently in his ear…

[A/N - I'm a bit late, but feliz navidade to my Panamanian pal, hauskaa joulua to m'Finn, boze narodzenie to the lovely pole, nollaig shona duit to my fellow countrymen and to all others including ever-presents in Canada, Australia, , the US and UK, Merry Christmas]


	46. Chapter 46

It's not right; two out of five really isn't all that great. It's less than half. Forty percent. In almost any game you care to play, two out of five is a losing score. It's a failing grade. There's really only one thing you can say about two-out-of-five, and that's that it is better than nothing. Sometimes, however, that's enough. Take it from Dylan; he's just clawed his way up from nothing, so you can trust him. Nothing is no place he ever wants to go again. Believe him when he tells you, when you've been there, two out of five is the world on a platter.

So if he wants to be overjoyed, to be _ecstatic_ , at having just two out of five Horsemen back around him, let him. Don't ruin this. It's been a long couple of days; he couldn't be more grateful for Jack and Lula, and for the information they've managed to scrape up along the way.

Besides, he doesn't _need_ you to ruin that for him. Dylan is all too aware that two-out-of-five is no landslide victory just yet. Every time the thought recurs, guilt cuts him like a wire pulled tight. Though his happiness hasn't bled out yet, it gets more and more difficult to maintain with each assault. When the thought develops, expanding the definitions until it can include Alma, when two out of five becomes two out of six, his glow suffers an especial fade. His thinking, usually gripped in such a tight fist when there is work to be done, escapes him for a second. All Dylan can do is stare after it down a dark path; he's had only two blocked calls since he first barred her number. It's not like her. Not like her not to borrow another phone, to find one somewhere, to set-up one of the temporary, self-deleting email accounts they'll use sometimes, even if it's only to call him every name she knows for cutting her out.

Well, good. Fine. She took the hint. And he did it to protect her in the first place, so Dylan is more than happy. It's just one more thing to lift his spirits. Finally, after days of collapse, of everything turning in on itself, of everything that could possibly go wrong doing so in fine and exuberant style, one more thing going his way.

And here's another:

Speaking from a purely logistical standpoint, by which he means gauging their skills objectively by their suitability to the task at hand, removing personality and preference from the equation entirely and therefore offering no reflection whatsoever on other absent parties and their respective competencies – it is around this point that he realizes he is offering all these caveats to no one but himself – the two Horsemen he's got are the ones he would have wished for.

There, there it is, stated, thought-out-loud. Dylan waits a moment, half-expecting lightning to strike him for daring to differentiate between one teammate and another. The strike never comes. Nor does another clutch of guilt, and there was no half-measure to his expecting that. It's the final confirmation that he's right, justified. After all, with Danny and Henley held prisoner, Dylan has a break-out to arrange. And what more could you ask for, planning such an event, than your quietest sneak-thief with the penchant for lock-picking and your loudest, smartest distraction? It seems not even his perpetually-keen sense of his own failings can disagree with him on that.

Only one thing keeps knocking Dylan down. One thing that keeps tonight from being the first really good thing he's had since the show in Rome. Well, no, two, but currently he can only see one of them. Alma had thought Quinn was a young boy. Up close – and he is keeping a _very_ close eye – Dylan wouldn't totally agree.

It is bent over an endless banquet table, about halfway along, drawing a detailed floorplan of 'Mom and Dad's house' on the white marble in crayon. Three different colours – the basic lines in blue, red for traps and danger, yellow for secret passageways. The schematic is surprisingly precise, accomplished work. The lines are straight, the scale is consistent, it can be read and followed with minimal effort. But then, what should surprise him about it? The clowns have never allowed Dylan any room to doubt, they know what they're doing. They know everything.

Everything, it seems, but the layout of the Funhouse on the left hand side of the stairwell, ground floor. Without looking round, tongue still stuck out with concentration, Quinn reaches back. One hand flaps, expecting to beat at a broad hard stomach somewhere by its left shoulder, "Help me out, big guy, what's over here before you get to the kitc…? Big guy?" Glancing left and right and then, suddenly loud, "Petey!"

Dylan's teeth grind at watching Jack fetch the other clown from outside. Just the proximity between them, when until recently he would have done anything to protect one from the other, he's having trouble getting used to it. But it's a little late to get between them now. They're collaborating. They're kidding – albeit there's a darker tone to Quinn calling, "Grab him. Not too hard, now, we're not trying to hurt anybody." A sense of belonging together, something Dylan missed – these who have gone through the worst together are tied now. Dylan can only decide to catch up or to be left behind.

Head peering around first, Petey comes sloping in at the main door, head down. "What, are you seeing the sights? Come and help me. What's off the front hall on the left?" Little grabbing motions by his face, like pulling a cat's whiskers. " _Oh_ , the fixing room, right, right…"

It leans over again to fill in the blank, and finds Lula leaning in on the other side of the table. Studying work already done she asks, blithe and fully appreciating that it probably doesn't matter, "What's a fixing room?"

"It's this old tradition normal people don't need anymore and we still kind of do. Big room off the hall and, when you come for a party, after your gondola or your carriage or dragging yourself through mud, you can take a little detour through there. Fix your face and your outfit and whatever before you head on to the ball. See?"

"How totally Scarlett O'Hara."

"Ah, it sounds that way but mostly it's just a tonne of really samey, contrived fake-fights about who stole whose white pan-stick."

It hardly seems to notice Lula laughing. Its attention is elsewhere – it finds more crayons under its baseball cap, gives them to Petey and points a parallel table. He is to start at the roof and race it to 'the balloon room'. But Dylan sees. He sees it and has to resist the urge to go over there and pull her away from the table by both pointy elbows, drag her back with her arms still folded like a straitjacket so he'll have her full attention when he hisses at her, _Don't._ _Don't be so stupid, Lula, that's how they get you._ _That's what they do, it's how they know so much; you're so busy laughing you don't see them stripping anything of worth right out of you_. He shook Petey's hand, but he checked first that it was gloved.

He resists because he needs them. Not just their two-table map, but their access, their inherent knowledge of the rules of that world.

And because, it must be said, they are trying. Quieter than they want to be, reigning themselves in, they apologise every time he flinches. They creep about, which has the wholly unintended side effect of making him flinch a lot more if one accidentally creeps behind him. They've been _painfully_ accommodating, have offered every inch of this building to the cause. Dylan only knows how tired he must look because they went on so long about the guest rooms on the top floor. It might have been a joke except that Jack and Lula joined the chorus.

These things considered, he now dares to approach, getting just close enough to study the completed plan of the Funhouse basement.

"These red doors," he says – this is the effort he makes in return, a wary agreement to engage with them – "These are the rooms you were talking about before?"

"Yeah. They're in there somewhere. But it's like I said, only one of them is ever a real door that opens, and they change which one. I've only done it once and it was the first floor by the stairs. Last time they stuck Petey in there he got out on… Three, man?" Petey never looks up from his work, but one hand swings up over his shoulder, splayed wide. "Fifth floor. And that was eight months ago, so it won't be that one anymore."

But there's a way. There has to be. The basic tenet of Dylan's life has been simply that; there is always a way. There was, for instance, a way one young man of no real worldly significance and, in the beginning, no resources to speak of could strike back at one of the largest corporate conglomerates on the planet. There was a way of not only gathering some of the greatest magicians alive, not only turning them to a greater purpose, but getting them to stop competing and in-fighting long enough to actually accomplish it. There's a way to pull a signed card out of a fresh-cut tree.

This, by comparison? Opening a door? Give him ten minutes.

Ten, uninterrupted minutes – did he really just dare to ask for that? His eyes are closing in resignation even before he hears the ringing. When it comes Dylan only nods. He reaches for his phone. Of course it's ringing. Why wouldn't it ring? He needs it not to, for just a little while, so why wouldn't it?

But his interest piques again, just a little, to find it's not just a call but a request for a video link. In addition, it is coming from one or the other of the Evies.

At first he tries to walk away from the table and take it. The Evie calling is the same one he left to face all those questions alone; he can tell because she doesn't have her sister's clown-inflicted bruises. With the same impeccable professionalism she displayed then, she checks first, "You made it back to Italy safely, then?"

"I did. No little thanks to you. But, listen, this isn't a great time for me."

"Nor for us," and her edges are a little harder now, the words have corners. "We're hoping not to take up too much of your time. We just thought it prudent to check with you before we do anything about him…"

" _She_ thought!" This outburst draws the attention of the first Evie. The second, with the yellow-lapping pool of the bruise bright and bloody on her temple, appears when the camera turns. Balking, in her brassier voice, " _I_ was all for righteous and immediate vengeance."

The pictures tell Dylan the whole tale. He wheels back to the marble table; this involves his newest friends just as much as any old ones.

The Evies have come into possession of a clown. Apparently, having thoroughly networked the stage hands and cleaning staff of a half-dozen hotels and casinos since their arrival in Monte Carlo, they had very little difficulty in finding out where Pantalone and the Doctor had been based. There, they managed to catch the latter. Still with his white coat and medical mirror on, he has been tied hand and foot, gagged, and propped up in a straight-backed chair.

Quinn snatches for the phone when it sees this. Dylan is faster, and it backs away with its hands up. By then, Petey is right behind it. In a mutter, below what the microphone will pick up, "Please, Mister, that's our Mom. He never hurt anybody. He couldn't. Look at him, he's made of straw and noodles, he's a matchstick man. He's the one taught Petey to be such a pushover. You have to believe me, no way Doc hurt anybody."

It continues these repetitive little pleas, bubbling like a stream at the edge of Dylan's consciousness. The pop of every M and P, every broken-glass C, jarring spikes in volume, they pick at his concentration, force him to let them in when it's the last thing he wants.

" _We agreed_ ," the first twin says through her teeth, "Given your recent troubles, to give you first refusal."

"We _agreed_ nothing, _mein Fuhrer_."

"Ignore her, she's concussed."

And still, underneath it all, a little strained now –whether with the stress or Quinn is running out of breath – "Make them let him go. Please, Mom's all we've got left. Look at him – what more proof do you need? Panty left him behind because he was turning on him, what else could the story be? Please, Shrike-"

There's no room for anything. Dylan's own thoughts have been edged out. He couldn't answer either of them now if his life depended on it. He shouldn't even be able to _notice_ , when another opinion weighs in. But Lula has a decided advantage, and it is in the words she chooses. She says, "No," with which Dylan, on a very basic, almost reptilian level, agrees. She goes on, then, to say, "How did they find him so easily? And what, he was just waiting? No –" There's that wonderful, affirming word again, that beautiful validation and here comes another, "This is a trap."

Petey's hands shoot over Quinn's shoulders and spit quick, unintelligible. The translation comes with a second's delay. Cross-eyed from trying to read in front of its own face, "He says misdirection is your bag, not ours. With us it all tends to hang out, pretty much."

Jack, furrowing, "He said all that so fast?"

"No, he said you're dumb, but I cleaned up what he really said because we're all trying to stay friends."

Dylan misses this. He's stuck back at what Lula said, words that shouldn't even have been able to reach them, but they did. One of them, in particular, has lashed around his brain like a whip and kept tight hold: _Trap_.

The one word Dylan has always associated with them, the one feeling they unavoidably evoke, trap _,_ trapped _,_ he bypasses completely the possibility that her back-up might be rooted in the fact that Lula knows a clown tried to kill her and sticks on the single concept, _this is a trap, they are trying to trap me, I am already halfway into their trap_.

His resolve begins to solidify – let the twins get what they need. Dylan's already got two clowns more than he really wants. At least he's certain these ones are trustworthy. What does Doc get him but another delay, more time wasted waiting? No. Trap or not, the risk just isn't worth taking.

Petey sees this happening faster than Quinn does. Senses the imminent loss and, frantic, beats at the little shoulders in front of him, _Not working._ _Try something else, fast_.

The bubbling stops. No more pleading. This time when Quinn grabs the phone away it is faster than any other hand in the room could be. "Give us a sec," it bites at the twins, and slams them face down on the table, blind. "I don't want my sainted mother to see how I'm about to behave."

It turns to stand face-on with Dylan, though for the moment its eyes are down. Confusion makes him hesitate. If the bony little fool thinks it is squaring up, it's a bad joke. This is not the time. But at the corner of his eye, Jack is reaching automatically for the arm Quinn injured so he has to ask, "And how's that?"

"Serious." The eyes lift and fix him. All their light has been shut off. Beneath one, a racing heart twitches a vein; this is unfamiliar and too important for it to screw up. "You need to bring Doc here." At the first sign of Dylan shaking his head, "The Eye will do it, there is a long history of co-operation between-"

"No."

" _Grow up_ , Shrike! You need him. You need what he knows. About Dad, about what he wants, all of it. Even about the Funhouse, the place has more dead ends than a hippy's hair. Me and Petey, we'll tell you everything we know, but it still might not be the half. Now, if we have to use our network, that's what we're going to do. But it won't go well for those two girls you were just talking to, and Panty's gonna know about it. If _you_ bring him here, though, with _your_ people, then _you_ are the one with something you can use."

Still thinking, still in between the options, he starts to reach out for the phone again. The smaller hand lashes out again and rests on top of both. Not enough pressure to stop him, not really, but nevertheless he stops.

"You ignored us once before; where'd it get you?"

"…He knew I'd ignore you. Pantalone. He knew. He was counting on it."

"Same as he's counting on you having nothing up your sleeve because you won't save Doc."


	47. Chapter 47

"For what it's worth-"

Lula's voice is a surprise, another flinch in a day full of them. At least this one dies off more pleasantly than the rest have. Still, Dylan's a little aggravated; she's found him alone on an upstairs balcony. It's a spot he needed not only to find a strong enough signal for an international call, but to keep secret the processes and contacts whereby he is able arrange the various improbabilities of their profession and their professionally-bound lives. But the calls are all made and she has found him alone and quiet. Found him doing nothing and more than likely looking as if he _couldn't_ do anything if he wanted to. He was _about_ to shake it off, he'd swear it to you, he really was. She's a second too early and feels she has to come with that soft, sweet voice like she's trying to get around an animal that might bite.

"For what it's worth, that was brave. Whatever you think of clowns and whether it was clowns or not to begin with, that was a huge thing you did just now."

"Are you kidding me? What happened to 'it's a trap'?"

"Hey, I'm _allowed_ to be biased, alright? I have an _excuse_."

" _You_ said 'it's a trap' and I nearly agreed. I was all ready to follow _you_ , except it would have lost us Petey and Quinn, maybe got the Evies hurt."

"See, this is why you're in charge and not me. I wasn't even thinking that. I'd be down there right now trying to talk those two out of revolting." At that last word an inevitable comeback rises up so strong that Dylan has to literally bite his tongue, so inevitable that Lula hears it anyway and points a warning finger, " _Don't_."

"No, I wasn't going to. As clowns go, the ones we've got are less than rev-" Another flash of warning and he relents. "Sorry."

Sunday-school unshakeable, as if she's teaching him words that must be known by rote, that it is sacrilege to change, "The ones we've got are good. From what Petey's been telling me about his Mom, we'll have another good one soon. That's you, you did that. Which brings me back to why I came up here, which was only really to say what I already did. And thank you, I guess, for ignoring me. I don't think any more that it's a trap."

There's a moment where he ought to say something. It passes and she turns to leave. Not offended and having said what she wanted. But not entirely satisfied either. She's all but gone when Dylan winces and calls her back.

And, even as he's telling himself not to do this, it's not necessary, no one needs to know it, no one's business but his own and it will never come up anyway, not now that he's moving past it, even as he tells himself there is no point in telling anybody anything, "You asked me once before what I had against them. And I… I wasn't completely… It was true, but it wasn't the who-"

With a smile and a brisk little nod, "You fobbed me off." Brisk little steps too, bringing her back to him, a brisk little hop up onto the balustrade. Sitting next to him with her back to three storeys of thin air; there was no trap in Doc's appearance but there might be a taste of one in this. This is a display of trust, very possibly designed to keep him from fobbing her off again. Showing faith, to prove that she expects it in return. Dylan wastes a second analysing this. Lula mistakes his quiet for surprise, for feeling caught out. "Oh yeah. Saw that a mile away. But I also saw it wasn't going to matter what I said and what way I asked it, you wouldn't tell me more than you wanted to. Figured I'd just let it go and make up my own mind later."

"Damn. Really thought I played you well that day."

"It's one of those times where it turns out I'm not half as dumb as people think."

"Especially scary, seeing nobody thinks you're dumb. I just thought _I_ was on point."

"You were too spooked to be on point."

" _Alright_ , enough of the unflinching honesty! You want me to tell you this or not?"

She makes a real show of tossing it up, weighing the pros and cons in her head. He's glad the clowns are downstairs out of the way. Doesn't like the way they eye her up sometimes. It's not fear anymore, and Dylan has no suspicions left for Petey and Quinn. It's just that he knows what poachers look like. He sees the occasional impressed, judging expressions flash across their faces and recognizes them; he looked at Lula the same way when he was considering her recruitment. Exaggeration, resilience, energy, talent for pantomime; he doesn't know what kind of boxes the interlopers might be ticking but those could well be among them. "Yeah," she says, in the end – perfect comic timing; she kills off the act in the moment right before it becomes boring – "Let's hear it."

Dylan breathes deep. It will help him to say it all out loud. Help him arrange his thoughts. At least, that's what he has to tell himself before he can talk at all.

"Clowns are older than magicians. For no other reason than that, at a very basic level, it's easier to induce laughter than real, genuine awe. The story they use, if you ask them to explain it, like something out of a bible, goes that two cavemen go out hunting. One of them falls in mud. And when they get back to the rest of the tribe, and somebody asks why he's covered in mud, the other guy does a pretty good impression of the pratfall and makes them all laugh. They'll tell you he became the cave-clown from which they are all descended but by then they aren't explaining anymore. By then they're just making you laugh.

"Magicians didn't exist until people got smart. Not just smart enough to work out a trick and perform it, but smart enough to be an audience. You have to have pretty strong ideas on how the world works before you can be fooled. Otherwise you call it witchcraft and people end up getting worshipped or killed. People have to be smart enough to enjoy it.

"Magic was only just evolving and the clowns had their whole gig already worked out. They knew what their purpose was. May not have understood it all the way just yet, but they knew it. They exist to make things ridiculous. Make sure nothing is taken too seriously, keep things in perspective. Kids understand this too; when the stuffy teacher turns his back and a kid darts out of their seat to mimic his walk, same thing. The only difference is, the kid is in trouble if he gets caught. Clowns aren't. Think of jesters, king's fools. You don't hold a clown to account; they're too dumb.

"You could say it's the biggest trick that's ever been pulled. You won't have much trouble arguing the point. Because, honestly, Lula? I have never once met a stupid clown.

"Now, it's all quite literally ancient history, so it's difficult to be sure. But they say clowns first started to organize around the same time the Eye was in a very early stage. Street performers, court entertainers, travelling troupes, just loosely getting to know each other. And they started to swap what they know. This one guy doing cartwheels outside the Coliseum hears Mark Anthony talking about sending boats into Egypt, tells the admiral's jester and he spends the whole sailing kidding with the guy how he shouldn't kill Cleopatra. That's not my story, it's another example _they_ use. Doubtful there's any truth in it.

"They can get close to anybody they like. Because it's okay not to trust a magician; magicians are natural cheaters, and there's always that lingering witchcraft thing. Some people don't like to be deceived. But turn away a clown? Well, then you can't take a joke. And there's nobody in any sort of public office wants people to think they don't have a sense of humour.

"That's what they do. I'm pretty sure that was the first question you asked me. Feels like months ago so I could be wrong, but that's what they do. They know everything. They manipulate. They influence. It's the knowing, though, _that's_ the reason I have a hard time trusting them.

"You already know all about what happened when my father died. But this is a couple of months after. I guess it was supposed to be something special. Supposed to be a good thing, one of those things parents do to try and get your life moving again, stop you being stuck in that moment and… And anyway there was a circus in town. And my mother took me. I remember I didn't really want to go but the tickets were bought and they hadn't been cheap and I had no good reason for not wanting to go. So we did. You have to remember I was a child, Lula, you have to see this like a kid would.

"They knew my name. They knew who I was and they offered their condolences."

Dylan had more to say, but he comes to that particular phrase and he stops. It should be a shock to no one; he's been stopping at that since all that began. So he doesn't go on to explain how that planted a mistrust which very much coloured his perceptions when he began later to find out about the organization now known as the Commedia and its uneasy collaborations with the Eye. He can't. It's only logical steps, though; Lula will figure it out for herself pretty quick. Or she would, anyway, if she'd try. Just now, however, his stall seems to have stalled her too. Mute for once, and figuring nothing at all, she reaches out to rest a hand on his arm.

"Don't," he mutters. Pulls away, shaking himself. He tries very hard to laugh it off, "It's ridiculous."

"Like hell it is; would've scared the crap out of me. And even if it was ridiculous, so what? Isn't that what you just finished telling me? Everything is some kind of ridiculous? Does that stop it meaning anything?"

This is nothing he especially wants to hear. The effort is appreciated, yes, but it's not a tale he should have told her in the first place. Shouldn't have let it come back up, not when it's already so difficult to keep down lately. Given the situation, his mistrust might even be useful. He should find some way to refine and cultivate it, to turn it into an asset. Instead he's stuck with this all-or-nothing loathing of an entire organization and nothing he tries makes it any better. Dylan pushes off the balcony rail, takes the first step towards going back inside.

Pointing, unable to even change the subject, "Did they finish those floorplans?" Lula's face drops panic-blank as she drops off the wall. "That's what you came up here for, isn't it? To get me because they finished the floorplans."

"…I can't even figure out where I forgot that. It must have been on the stairs up. Or when I saw you just standing out here, I-"

"Forget it again. Come on."

"Okay. Oh, but don't mention that race they were having. Quinn won, but Petey says it had a head start, so Quinn says it had the basement to do and the basement is hardest and then he starts arguing about the roof. _Then_ they start comparing their work to see whose is better and it's really just not worth starting again."

Shaking his head, "Yeah, I wasn't going to mention it," and he starts away again, but can't feel her following. A glance back, the slightest tremor of frustration. A shrug, his open hands; what else could she possibly want? Hasn't she had enough out of him for one evening? But, on closer inspection, there's a dent in a lower lip where her teeth have closed on the inside. Lula isn't looking at him anymore, but at the shuffling toe of one shoe. Frustration gives way to the same protective fear he felt when she bounced up onto the balustrade. "What's the matter?"

"Is there anything else? I mean, just while it's honesty hour and it's only you and me. Nothing? It's just something Jack said the other night and I know he lied to me. I know why too, and I don't blame him. I was really freaked but… But if somebody could tell me what actually happened to Merritt I think I'd feel a whole lot better?"

Softening into relief, he sighs. This time he waves her with him before he walks away; not expecting her to follow anymore, keeping her next to him, and a half-step ahead. Once she's there, once he's got her moving and his own steps keep forcing hers, once she is too close to get a good look at him when she turns her head, "You remember when you thought you saw Chase McKinney in the square, before the last show? And I told you not to worry about it? I was… I mean, there's a _chance_ , possibly, I could have been wr… That you were right to worry."


	48. Chapter 48

Let's leave Dylan to work through that bombshell on his own. He'll try and deal with Lula, get her back on side, before they get down the stairs. She'll be quicker, and less inclined to think it's a good idea they keep the presence of the lesser McKinney just between them. Once Jack's included, it necessarily becomes an argument. No need for us to look in on any more of those.

Don't worry. You'll find if you ask yourself, you'll know how it goes. You'll know exactly how long it lasts and how much difference it makes to them – next to no time and next to nothing. Especially not in that group, with its mix of two families striving to maintain their wary truce. There is only so far any of them will trouble to go. They're better than that and, quite apart, none of them can take any more. They're too tired for it.

So let's leave them to it. Let's change the pace. Let's go somewhere where the mood never drops, and no one is ever tired, except in very broad strokes, all chasmic yawns and stretches like strychnine seizures. And it's only the mood we're shifting; the subject remains.

And y'know, the subject, who it must be said is generally something of a loner and in particular when it comes to the old game of grenade tennis he and his brother have been playing for quite some time now, has turned out to have a real can-do attitude. Really, things couldn't have worked out better for Pantalone. Just imagine, just think of the luck, just think how many stars have to align, to have the enemy of your enemy just drift by your back door. Why, it's almost too good to be true! And then for him to turn out and be such an accommodating, like-minded soul – they have disagreed on virtually nothing – well, each and every one of the gods must be smiling down on Panty these days.

Said and aforementioned subject was all too glad to take a shift watching the red room cameras. Currently he is in the side room with the monitors and the mirrored door, and can be heard giggling on the other side. Whooping softly to himself, muttering as he figures out the zoom. As if it were a gameshow, trying to spot a new room's tricks and exit before the captives can, to point it out and curse in frustration when they don't see it as quick as he does. Pantalone watches between two of the mirrors; it'd be adorable if it wasn't so pathetic.

But he has a marginally less amusing task to take care of. When he leans back out of the fractured reflections, he's got Collie standing in front of him. Tapping one of her sodden, stinking bunny slippers in sickly squelches, she is spattering his new-polished shoe with swamp water. The moment he lifts his foot to shake it off, she notices. It stops then.

Now, make no mistake – like any virtuous king, Panty loves all his subjects equally. He never _means_ to scare _anyone_. But sometimes that's just how it goes. Sometimes his subjects are very disappointing.

"Tell me," he begins, "how did you, my warrior princess, all seven and a half divine feet of you – or is it only seven with your heels off? – how did a glorious and powerful amazon such as yourself manage to lose that weedy, ragged little _puppet_?!" And having lost control of himself just right on the very tail there, and heard McKinney briefly quit giggling within, Panty makes a concerted effort, takes one of those deep, counted breaths Doc always used to go on about… Quite what a deep breath is supposed to do except prepare him to yell again has never been clear to him, but he tries it anyway.

Above a rolling shrug, Collie's puffy pout deepens until it pops open, "I'd have had him if it wasn't for Quinn."

The right answer. Not an informative one, failing as it does to relate to the question he asked, but the right one. A half-decent switch gag, it gives Panty just the twitch of a smile. His eternal rage dulls just as a quick as it can be whet keen. Now, appeased, he moves on. From each of his sagging pockets he produces a bowtie. One is neat and yellow, far too small for the thickness of his neck. The other is the width of a small scarf, the sort of tie associated with certain chicken-eating Southern colonels, black and patterned all over with red hearts. Both are the finest silk. Both have been carefully stained and rumpled, by his own loving hand.

Wary, expecting another snap, Collie asks, "What's the occasion?"

"Never mind the occasion. Which looks better? We want debonair. _But not flashy¸_ not flashy. Is the yellow flashy?"

She grabs the black from his hand and flips up his collar to sling it into place. As she fixes the voluminous knot, in position to choke him at any moment and therefore feeling much safer, she returns to their first point. "How'd they get past Valerie, that's the real question…"

"Ah. Ah, now that, _that_ , Sweet Columbine, I've got an answer for." Tie fixed, patted flat under her shovel palms, he turns her by the shoulders – reaching up to do so – and pushes her towards the next flight of stairs. "Take yourself right up to the top floor and call out for Val. He'll let you know where to find him. You should actually cut him down by now, maybe. I left him where I found him, but there's a strong possibility he's slowly suffocating in his own mask."

Who could resist such an enigma? What begins with a little harlequin behind a locked door and ends with the potential for an agonizing, hours-long death? A punchline Collie can't guess; the last breath of his hint has barely cooled and she trills excitement, dashes off gleeful, like a child with the first clue of a treasure hunt.

Or, and this is only just possible, it is a possibility Panty doesn't like to entertain, but she might be worried. It would disappoint him, but she might go running in case Valerie needs _help_. In her haste she leaves one soaked slipper behind on the stairwell.

Panty shudders. But he decides to give her the benefit of the doubt, seeing he's in one of his better moods.

Careful of the neat, even bow she tied, he eases himself between two of the mirror slices into the room with the monitors. 'Ease', perhaps, is the wrong word; it requires rather too much angling and edging and sucking-in to be called easy. But McKinney doesn't notice. The screens hold his attention with magnetic power. If a clown struggles to keep the buttons down the front of his shirt from straining, and no one is around to see it, did it ever even happen? After a lifetime of performance, and an ever-lengthening age of holding his breath in narrow doorways, Panty would be inclined to say no.

Therefore, absolutely nothing happens between the mirrors. Panty is outside the room and then he's inside it. Simple as that, no more to it.

The mesmerist is laughing again, tossing back his head so that enviable Auguste wig of his wobbles springlike. Pointing at one screen, still giving that image of rocker-bound gameshow addict yelling at his trailer television; "May I be the first to _congratulate_ you," he slimes, "You are an _artist_ , sir."

"You may not. I've been congratulated plenty before." That's the honest truth. But it still feels pretty good. And it's not often Pantalone gets to hear it from outside his own fairly closed fraternity.

"It's this rabbit, though, friend. This here rabbit-" One thick finger stabbing the old screen, leaving little bullet-holes of fog on the glass, "- Is a masterstroke."

Another something for them to agree on. Pantalone thought the rabbit was pretty damn clever too. A white rabbit hippity-hopping around one of the rooms; not only does it look damn good with all the concrete and the bright red door, but it has absolutely _nothing_ to do with anything whatsoever. It won't lead the captives to an exit, it doesn't provide any clues, there's nothing special about the water left out for it or the bowl that holds it. It's a bunny rabbit. It's cuddly? Does that count for anything?

And yet, as McKinney goes to such lengths to point out, Reeves and Atlas have spent the last ten minutes at least examining the animal and the various accessories that come with it. Poor fluffball would have undergone less scrutiny in a testing lab.

When the time comes to move on, find a new room and let it drive them another ten-percent crazy? They'll worry about the animal. Forget the fact that it was fine before they arrived, that nothing can happen to it in an empty room, and discuss what to do with the animal.

Almost laughing at even the thought, yes, Panty agrees; he thought it was a masterstroke too.

McKinney has the oddest smile; mouth always a little open, you can hear it, a perpetual dog-whistle sort of tone that occasionally swoops down into speech. A damn difficult thing to mimic, Panty thinks, listening with intent and professional interest. He turns away to hear it better, without the interference of that toxin-tautened face (does that have something to do with why he can't close his lips?), and finds a bar of himself reflected in one of the half-turned mirrors. He'd have to take a very considerable step back to fit all of his shoulders in, so he contents himself with the image he has, extrapolates what he can't see. The tie is wrong. It's too dark. Should have worn the yellow one. But Collie did a good job tying it so he leaves it in place for now. He'll have a think about that. He picks a speck of lint off the satin collar of his tailed jacket.

The grime in the lines of his face, however, that won't smear any whiter than it already has.

He glances back at McKinney. Still eking giggles, still fascinated. There's not a lot of harm the fool could do even if he did leave this room, even if he did get loose somewhere. He'd walk in a circle, up and down the interconnected stairwells that make an eternal loop out of the second and third floors unless you know where the elevator is. He'd do it for hours and only ever think the house was getting bigger. No, there seems little danger in leaving this glassy-eyed idiot alone. He might stick a fork in a socket, but that could be fun to watch. In fact, he'd fit right in. Maybe that's what they'll do. When they're done with him, when these interesting times pass, they'll just never tell him it's over. See how long it takes before he learns to paint his colours on right after he brushes his teeth in the morning. Panty would give a week before his shoes start to honk.

He catches himself drifting on the dream and snaps to attention. No, no harm in leaving McKinney unsupervised. And, quickly analysing the angles Mickey Mouse is pointing his great white gloves around the face of his watch, he might just have time.

He excuses himself.

Not rushing, of course not, a chief never needs to rush, he makes his way downstairs, to a long room just off the main hall on the left, before you get to the kitchens. The fixing room. Dim right now but he switches on the bulbs around one of the dozen mirrors that line one wall and all the other mirrors work to make that light huge and soft. It's a very kind light based on stage and party lighting and if you intend to stand out in the real world you have to be pretty realistic with yourself. But that doesn't stop him pulling up straight, turning sideways to study the changes when he tugs as much of his belly up under his ribs as will go. Then he sighs it out again and turns back to the mirror.

The drawer beneath it gives him something to lean on, and is supplied with the basics. Just the white will do for now. It's been a while since he saw the colour of the skin beneath it. He can't remember when he lost count of just how many layers and patches are on there. A few more fresh smears will do the trick for now. His red and yellow were fresh this morning, he's sure of that. Just fix the white, that's all there's time for.

But every spot he fixes, he finds another to move on to. Time gets away from him.

A timid knock at the door is enough to jolt him. His hand slips, daubs heavy white stinging in the corner of his eye. All the tension of long minutes concentrating breaks in a string of words few of which would be understood and none of which should be repeated. His interrupter, apparently not so timid anymore, creeps into the room, shutting the door gently behind.

"Bauff," and by this mask-muffled epithet, Pantalone knows that Collie must have cut down Val.

The second he's within arms-reach, he gets his masked right-hand by the lapel and yanks him stumbling closer. "Shut up and c'mere." Pointing at his eye, fumbling a new sponge of the drawer. " _You_ did this, _you_ fix it." He leans back, eyes turned up to the ceiling. At the first touch of the sponge he hisses, recoils. Then, relaxing into it again, "You were better strung up from a sconce, y'know that? Quinn was onto something there. I'd hang you back up myself only there's no time. _She_ will be here any minute."

"Dassutt auh kuhjin t'toul oo. Fhef heer."

"She's _here_?"

The reason for all that greasepaint – the main one anyway – is the fire-engine red Pantalone can feel crawling up out of his collar, rising to the roots of his hair. It hides the blood and brimstone belting through him now. Unless you're watching closely and you see the vein twitch beneath his eye, or not so closely and you watch his hands grab gouges out of the air down beneath Val's eyeline, you'd really only know the depth of his anger if you watched the breath seething in and out of him, heard the growl in the back of his throat or, by some chance, happened to be in the same room at all.

On this one occasion, he swallows it. Which isn't to say that he forgets. He lets it go only temporarily. "You're lucky," he says, and there's a barely perceptible shift of the leather-masked head which might be a nod, "That I don't have more time on my hands." Then he tugs down his jacket, lifts up his chin, presents himself with open hands, "How is it?"

Two thumbs up from Valerie doesn't mean much, only that one brush with death will suffice him for today.

Pantalone strolls to the door, listening carefully for a second before he opens it. Voices out there, conversation. Sounds like one new houseguest has found another.

He steps out. McKinney has oozed his way down the hall, and is delicately taking the coat – pink, trimmed in mint green fur – of an angel, a vision, who cannot quite slide her thick arms free without his help. He is introducing himself. But all Pantalone can see just now is the miraculous crest of blonde buffeting up from a face which grows more beautiful with each new chin she cultivates, the Partonesque horizon revealed when the coat falls away and, beneath, last week's shopping is already clinging a half-size too tight. This is Rebecca, _caramellina,_ and he should have worn the yellow tie…

Her cool, sparkling eye meets his briefly, before she turns to face McKinney. A hand is offered limp as wet lettuce and politely taken. She's been working on her purr too, on the deep, plummy richness of it, rumbling like an engine, "Pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Pleasure's all mine," and McKinney lifts his eyes over her shoulder – or he tries too, then has to admit defeat and lift his head to see over the swell – "You're a sly one, Mr Pants; where've you been hiding such a ravishing creature until now?"

Trying not to make those strangling gestures again, Panty stuffs one hand in his pocket and occupies the other taking Rebecca by the waist, pulling her away. "Wouldn't you want to keep her a secret? But if you wouldn't mind, Mr McKinney, Becky and I have a little business to discuss. You could, if you wanted, go and find the Captain, see if you can't look in on Reeves and Atlas again."

Then there's the pretence, the whole big act, of wink and nudge and just between us. It takes almost a full minute to get rid of the creep. But he's useful, for now, so Panty breathes through it. It's easier with his arm around Rebecca. Though she tends to lean; more than once he feels her sliding and has to readjust his grip. She does, however, do a very pretty job of endlessly simpering after McKinney, of fluttering her little wave every time he glances back, until he's gone. Even then, she speaks through the gritted teeth of her frozen smile, "Panty, baby?"

"Yes, best girl?"

"Chase McKinney just introduced himself to me."

"I saw that."

"Yes, but honey, Chase McKinney and I first met more than two years ago, and on three occasions since."

Panty's truest and strongest smile of the day – and it has been a day of many smiles, of all styles and sizes – begins to shine through. He rolls her in along his arm, standing toe to toe. His other hand tips up her chin. He lets her dangle just long enough so she knows he's got the answers; he likes watching that look fill up her face.

"Don't let it worry you," he says, with a little kiss to her forehead. "He's forgetful. For instance, he had this wonderful idea about a rabbit, and he forgot all about it. Becky, my angel, would you believe me if I told you, he even forgot who paid for his flight to Rome?"

A gasp of _enormous_ shock, "I would not! I wouldn't believe _anyone_ could forget such a thing."

"No, sweetheart, me either…"


	49. Chapter 49

Apparently unmoved from his usual state of happy obliviousness, whether too dumb to know he's under such deep and potentially dangerous suspicion or too arrogant to care, Chase trots merrily off upstairs to do precisely as he was told. He goes to find El Capitan. First and foremost, he is all too willing to do what his temporary clown superior has asked. Staying in favour, appearing compliant, that's all part of the game. He may be pursuing his own results but if you can do it without chafing such a kindred spirit as Chase found in Pantalone, well, why wouldn't you? Second, he likes Cap too. Cap is another of the sort of guy Chase really appreciates; from his low-level sleaze to his taste in jewellery, they've got a lot in common.

It's also far from a terrible idea, to go looking in on the ravishing Miss Reeves, and that other guy, the dull one, the one that got stuck in there with her. What's his name, the one with the serious face and all the joy lobotomised out of him… Atlas.

And so it is with glad heart that he leaves Panty behind with his paramour. A little time is wasted thinking of that relationship. Then, with a shudder, Chase decides that the relationship itself is of minor importance. All he really needs to file away is that a relationship exists. He does so, and is relieved to find that all the frankly _horrible_ imagery dissipates along with active consideration.

On a third floor landing, Cap is lounging on a plastic sunbed of the sort commonly found by the pools of cheap hotels. He sees Merritt coming and doubles up his balloon-animal legs to make a space for him. Wrinkling his nose, lamenting the boredom and lack of ingenuity, "Still with that damnable _rabbit_ , I'm afraid."

"Oh, now, be kind. You're very lucky, getting to see magicians in their natural habitat; locked in a small box with a dumb, foldable animal." A token effort, this gets a token snort of laughter in reply. "Anyway, I just had to get out from under, downstairs. Your friend Collie, she ain't exactly flavour of the month since that little kid clown got away. Quite the little firecracker, your… niece? Nephew?"

"I have it on the highest authority that our once-beloved Quinn is no longer to be considered any family of mine. The Arlechinno is to be _demoted_. Bloody good thing and all, you ask me. Few fall so far from Panty's graces and last long. He'll probably take care of it alongside these Horsemen. At least if it's been pushed out by then, we might get a laugh. _Family_ funerals are such a bore."

"I don't know about that. I can think of one in my family I'd definitely have a good time at. Champagne and caviar, at that one."

"And dancing, I imagine."

"All over the grave." This, apparently, is more the kind of humour that is expected. Chase has learned this gradually; though it is as much a point of pride as part of their jobs to get any joke, they all have their personal tastes. Most of them wear these preferences large in their uniforms. Take Columbina, for instance; her stocking-and-suspender takes on the service profession expose a psyche rooted in sex, inversion, in the gleaming entrails of cliché torn open, an intelligent approach to pop cultural reference. A glancing look at El Capitan and the black humour of death and brutality might seem wrong but look closer. Check that captain's hat and picture him on a veranda out in The Colonies, sipping lukewarm tea while the slaves are flogged. See the weight and quality of the long line sports coat with its polished brass buttons. It's been worn threadbare for comic effect, but as a piece it belongs in a yacht club somewhere, discussing human beings in monetary values. The line between satire and vicious offence is fine, and it's very clear Cap doesn't worry about wandering too far one side or the other.

It is while he is contemplating these subtleties of clown character that Chase notes something of interest. Right in front of his nose, which might be how he came so close to missing it. The fact is simply this; the door in front of them goes all the way into the wall. The others have been veneers stuck on over fresh plaster over new brick. This one goes all the way into the wall, and has a little keypad panel set next to where a handle ought to go.

This one is real.

In a moment when they are both sighing off laughter – ask any mentalist; it's a good time to get questions answered, when two people are at equal levels of blithe happiness – Chase sits forward to point at the monitors. "You get many… _occupants_ , shall we call them, for those rooms?"

Shaking his head, "First time I've ever seen them used for visitors."

"Okay, visitors."

"Generally the rooms are a test for initiates. Designed to be so dull, so frustrating, so _unfunny_ , that the only thing to do is sit down and go quietly mad. One who would join the Commedia must – and without being told any of this, mind – maintain energy, stay _bloody well entertaining_!" He picks up his umbrella and jabs the monitor with the point, as if to move Reeves and Atlas to some new action. Then, with utter calm again, "Must, in short, be no more or less than a consummate clown, with no evident audience or prompt, all by itself, without rest, until released. And on the odd occasion that some naughty clown should forget this very simple tenet, we shove 'em back in for a couple of days until they remember their place."

"…No offence? But that sounds goddamn horrible."

It's not a joke, but it is met with another pitiless guffaw. Cap produces the gnawed stub of a cigar from inside his jacket and lights it. To Chase's surprise – even disappointment - it doesn't explode or spark and the smoke doesn't come off in rainbow colours. Maybe the ragged appearance, so out of sync with the rest of him, is supposed to be joke enough. Maybe, and Chase reads the probability of this in his stained teeth and fingers, he's just a smoker.

The moment a smoker inhales is another good time to ask a question. All the screaming synapses in their brain have just been soothed to silence. They're not thinking. "How much longer do you think they'll be in there?"

"Panty doesn't need them until tomorrow night."

"No, I mean, if they did more than just sit around with the rabbit. If they worked at it."

A disbelieving shake of the head, and Cap reaches over to slap Chase's shoulder. "Don't be silly, dear boy! No one gets out until they're _let_ out. Exploration and reward? Where's the fun in that? If you work hard and find the real door you'll be able to open it-" He chokes himself with mirth at the very idea of such simplicity. "Hellfire, no… This is the Old Country; we don't teach fairytales here, my New World friend. We deal in harsh realities."

El Capitan offers a wicked grin to go along with this wisdom. But it's not enough to make Chase laugh. Then, just as the panic flashes behind the sparkling old eyes – what hell, what cardinal sin, to be so unfunny that this permanently-grinning idiot can't be coerced to the mildest giggle – Chase cuts in in quick to spare Cap his shame. "Can't we just peep in on them? Isn't there somewhere? We might be able to get them to _do_ something."

"What, cluck like chickens?"

"That is a _myth_ , myth-ter, about mesmerism, and don't you forget it… But yeah, if you like." The Captain considers it, scratches his sculpted whiskers, sucks his teeth. A detailed and accomplished performance, no doubt, but it carries on a little. Chase cuts him off, "Ah, forget it. I know you can't open the door."

"Whoever told you that, old spud?"

"What, that you can't get them out? Big Chief Greyface. 'Least, I think that's what he said. Hard to hear him the way all that day-old makeup cracks when he talks."

Cap sputters and guffaws. With his first possible breath, "I'll do you a favour and never tell him you said as much."

"Oh, you all tippy-toe around him too much. You can't tell me honestly he's a clown with no sense of humour, can you?" No immediate response, but instead a hesitation full of rubbery, struggling vowel sounds, Chase hawks up his laugh long and bright, "On second thoughts, that's the best joke I've heard all day." He forces the laugh on and on until, out of professional obligation more than any amusement, Cap has to join in. This is mentalism at its most basic, the deep down first principles that most social beings have some natural understanding of; if you can get someone to laugh along with you, you can get them to do most anything. They join you in one thing. It's an easy happy thing, and a self-perpetuating happiness. As long you as you keep laughing, you keep getting happier. Keep getting happier together and it's only a matter of time.

"No reason we shouldn't look in on them, I suppose," says Cap, as he sighs it all away, chases the slightest tear from the corner of his eye. He gets up and walks to the door. There's another elaborate and accomplished act, with which Chase happily joins, where the guest tries to steal the door's combination, and Cap works very hard to shield the keypad. He stops at the last digit and turns to issue a stern warning, "But just a look, mind. There's no helping them. Even if there were, there'd be no point."

Repeating, like a school favourite who has learned well his lesson, "No one gets out until they're let out."

One last number and the door pops out. No swing but it slides to one side. The room inside is perhaps the emptiest of all the maddening boxes. The concrete walls look exactly as they do on the black and white monitors. So does the bare white bulb, the damp-stained floor, all of it the same as all the others. But the echoes are something Chase hadn't imagined. His _breathing_ has an echo. The cool, clammy air sticks to him from the first step. He hovers near the door, making sure he is always between it and the Captain, that he's never trapped. Barely aware of doing it; an animal's fear of a closing door. Blame it on the time-served, if you must.

But Cap is waiting in the middle of the floor, looking down with a loopy twinkle in his eye.

Taking those few steps forward, Chase covers his wariness with pretend excitement, creeping up like a child trying to catch Santa Claus.

Soon they are standing on opposite sides of a barred hole in the concrete. There's nothing down below just yet except the drifting light from the open door. But at the sound of the warming snigger from above, there is muttering and whispering down below. Chase kneels by the opening to listen better. "Come along then," the Captain coos, "Come on, there's a good pair of pets. Come and say hello."

The rabbit answers the call first. Dropped in shock more likely than released for effect, it comes hippity-hopping into view. "Now that," says Merritt, breathless with the beginning of another bout of hysteria, "would be a magic trick."

At the first clear sound of his voice Atlas comes storming.

"This must be very frustrating for you," Chase says, before he can speak. "I just can't imagine what it's like to know you're in the room directly underneath the open door. Hell, you'll probably be up here by morning, now that you know where you're headed. But the door won't be open _then_."

A step behind, "Is that him?" and Henley is right there too, looking up. Chase waves, a little trill of his fingers. "Hm. You were right; he is uglier."

"I told you. You'd never exactly say identical?"

"No, I mean… Look, if _I_ wound up looking like that? I'd be asking for my brother's money back."

Cap throws his head back cackling. "So seldom one meets a true lady."

Chase's smug grin remains unaffected. Chase doesn't hear insults. Doesn't believe in them and, therefore, to him they are no more than white noise, unexplained gaps in conversations he doesn't care about anyway. Besides, it's the shadows. It's the unfriendly angle, her looking up at him, the lightbulb above his head. None of it is flattering. Besides which, the surely-delightful Ms Reeves is a prisoner right now and she's doing what she can to show power and strength where she has none. It's fine. He'll live. He's not stung at all, he's absolutely fine, really.

With only the merest twang of strain, acting as if she never spoke, "Look at 'em, stuck down there… They're adorable! Cap, I'm glad your big boss man was wrong; my day got immeasurably better when we came in here. I mean, I'm not going to lie to you, but I've had dreams like this, while I-", sharper, directed at the captive Horsemen, "- rotted in prison!"

The Captain doffs his cap and sweeps it down in a bow. "I exist but to serve."

Below, and entirely beneath Chase's ever-buoyant notice, Henley murmurs, " _Rotted_ is a good word."

"Like overripe fruit," says Atlas, humming agreement.

"Maybe he'll split someday."

"That would be so nice…"

"You'll just find him all black and slimy in a drawer at the back of the fridge, toss him out with salad tongs."

"Don't tease. Seriously, you have to stop."

Chase would like it stated that this exchange, and others like it still to come, have no effect on how quickly the appeal of spying on the two captives wears off. As has already been made clear, he is impervious to such callous and childish personal attacks. But with the ceiling between them, and both potential victims perfectly capable of using that concrete to block eye contact, there's not much fun he can have. And El Capitan was entirely correct; there is no help to give and no point in trying. Stalemate is built into the conversation; a few more insults volleyed, some more discussion between clown and mentalist over the likelihood of them ever reaching this door without help.

Ultimately, like visitors in a zoo drift from one exhibit to the next, Chase and the Captain lose interest. And there are no macaques here, no prairie dogs, no otters. Nothing to it but to chalk this up as a relaxing and fulfilling experience, and leave.

The Captain is one step ahead. He's getting the door, like a gentleman should. What a pity he doesn't turn around though; if he'd only turn around, he'd see the _terrible_ accident about to befall. He could call out. He could _prevent_ it.

He could cry out, or even just point, and Chase would see the unforgivable mistake he's about to make. One stupid accident and it could destroy everything Pantalone is trying to achieve here in this concrete labyrinth. You see, as Chase stands up, a cell phone is slipping from his pocket. Plain and anonymous to an outsider but to those of us who know and have been paying attention, immediately recognizable. It belongs to Merritt. And, as Cap stands at the door all too tragically oblivious, it slides free and falls between the bars in the floor.

With a muffled thump it drops into Henley's waiting hands, and no one in the room above ever notices a thing.

Gosh darn it.


	50. Chapter 50

Ask almost anybody you can think of, stab down your finger on a list of names related here in this tale and ask them, they can tell you exactly how much danger they are in, where it's likely to come from and what form it's likely to take. _Almost_ anybody; you'll have trouble asking Quinn anything. Quinn is sleeping, and sleeping the sort of sleep that would worry a medical professional. After twenty-four hours or more of solid stress and paranoia, it is, quite simply, gone.

It wasn't easy to get away. It took careful application of the proper hugs and comforts, a slow convincing that began several hours before the descent into darkness itself, but it has gotten there. Balled up like an animal on the chaise longue in the gilt room (which Shirley Bassey definitely never sat on; it was Eartha Kitt), one foot twitches as it chases pint-size dinosaurs through a bowling alley in its dreams. You could ask Quinn anything you want right now. You could ask Quinn if it wouldn't maybe like to escape a raging fire creeping ever closer to its sharp little nose, or a slavering wolf just lowering open jaws around its skull. You could ask Quinn if it wanted next week's lottery numbers. You could ask, but you're not getting an answer.

Then a big hand asks. It wraps the little shoulder and asks softly, but insistently. With patience, asking over and over until, all twitches and flinches, Quinn begins to waken. Hating the moment, groaning, it keeps its eyes shut and prays to be left alone. When that doesn't work it analyses the asking hand. By its size and its shape, its weight and its scars, it knows soon and with certainty that it belongs to Petey.

Anybody else. _Anybody_ else, and Quinn would be playing very, very dead right now.

"This had better be so good. I'm telling you this before I open my eyes so you can walk away if it's not. Also so I can tell you, before you start anything serious, that those goddamn velociraptors are too fast, and they say if you dream something more than once it must mean something, and I don't know what that would be, but I think it can only be a good thing that the dinosaurs are running away from me?"

The hand on its shoulder pulls it up to sitting. Another sweeps in and, thumb and forefinger, prises the lids of Quinn's left eye apart.

"You were the one who told me I needed rest!" but it regrets this outburst almost immediately. Petey wants to tell it to be quiet. To do this, he needs at least one hand, and chooses to use the one that was holding it up. Quinn drops back and knocks its head on the arm of the chaise.

After that, it is awake.

In a stage whisper, "Why are we being quiet?"

 _May_ – shorthand for Lula is the arcs of an M drawn bouncy across his heart – _sleeping._ _Don't want Wilder_ – just by tapping the fading bruise by his eye – _to hear us_.

"Why not?" but he hushes it again. He stretches out a hand for it to take. Quinn thinks it's being helped up. Only when it stumbles does it realize it is being led. "Petey, where are we going?"

A step into the hallway outside, he turns, blocking it into the room. Hands together like a prayer, _Please_.

Quinn likes the kind of surprises that come in shiny boxes with pretty bows on them. Mystery destinations should be heavily trailed beforehand to work up excitement, unless there's a picnic basket involved. Quinn will follow a picnic basket through the gates of hell and not notice until the smell of brimstone overwhelms it. But there's no picnic basket, and it's the middle of the night. How many good surprises happen in the middle of the night? It starts to shake its head. On the very verge of digging in its heels, pulling its hand free of Petey's, insisting on the truth.

Then he says, _Trust me_.

'Trust' is both hands pulling away from his chest, grabbing fistfuls of air. The look on his face makes a query of it, asking if Quinn does or if it can or if it will. So bluntly and comprehensively put, the questions cut through its doubt. It grabs hold of both his clutching hands and breathes out soft, "Fine. But you owe me."

There's no acknowledgement of this. There's no gag, and that's what brings Quinn's worries surging back. Petey just takes its offer of compliance and starts to lead again. His grip on its hand stays tight enough to pile its fingers up against each other.

They stop only once on their way to the door, and this because Dylan Shrike appears on the gallery above. Pacing, carrying an old corded telephone with him, handset held against his shoulder. He has only just stepped out, as if the room above were choking him and he needed the space. But he reaches the end of the cord pretty quick, and when his back is turned, pacing the other way, Petey edges ahead into the darkness beneath the gallery. Both hands behind him, and the bulk of his body to deaden any sound, he is sliding back the bolts on the main door. He pauses, glancing back to find Quinn still watching Shrike. Holding its breath too, trapped high in its chest as if it might call out.

Petey waves, and signals again, _Trust_.

Quinn hesitates a second longer, then scuttles over to join him in the shadow. When the door opens Petey ushers it out first, as if afraid it will try again not to follow. That gives a second – not much but long enough - where Quinn is alone on the damp step in the glittering, starry dark. Its back is to the wall; the water moves against the toes of its boots. "No," before it even knows Petey is listening. "No. I'm not going anywhere in a boat in the dark. I'm not."

Without argument, without even trying, Petey steps into the light, bobbing boat that brought Shrike, and tries to pull Quinn with him.

"What part of _no_?" but he hushes it again. The rest is conducted in silence but for the swipe of hands flung around and the slap of interrupting each other. _Tell me where we're going_.

 _Can't._ _Please trust me._ _Help me._

 _Help you what?!_

 _You did this before._ _You did it with Wilder._ _Not different._

 _Crazy different!_ _Understood that!_

Petey seizes. His grip turns, for just a moment, painful. Until now, 'trust' was never the problem. Seeing a flash of frustration go through him, Quinn quails. But then his hands turn gentle again. One over the other, very gently trying to reel it in towards him. There's one step it could take off the stone and into the boat but it can't. Petey, letting go for very brief seconds, says, _Tell me about the dinosaurs._

 _No_.

 _What kind of dinosaurs?_

Quinn sighs. Its eyes are shut. "Well, I told you already about those fricking raptors, I never catch them. There's a diplodocus, I get him first because he's so big and fat, but he's gentle. And one of them ones with the bony Mohawk and the spikes on its tail. And a trike, but when you try and put the collar on him-" The world under its next step rocks sickly and Quinn keens. Petey pulls it close to help it sit down. "- Aaand I'm in a boat in the dark, oh God – you try and put the collar on and you can't get around the frill, so I can't get him on a leash and he just wanders away again…"

Quinn never knew it knew so much about the dinosaurs out of the stupid dream. It knows a lot about the bowling alley too. It knows what colour the balls are and how many lanes there are and which of the neon lights work and don't. Or maybe it doesn't and it makes all of this up, just to keep talking, just to keep its eyes shut and think about anything that isn't the hammock-sway of the boat and the stinking, stagnant canal all around, waiting to swallow it. All Quinn would have to do is touch the black surface of that water and it would be slurped under like spaghetti and never seen again.

"You shouldn't have done this to me," it says. "It's not even funny. I can't even inven-" But it stops. He wants it to pay attention now, little pushes at its shoulder. And the moment its eyes open, before they can adjust to new lights or recognize the surroundings, the first thing it sees is his fist, thumb stuck up a little, moving in quick, earnest circles in front of his chest.

 _Sorry._ _Really sorry, Quinn._ _Big sorry._

It doesn't get the chance to ask what he's sorry for. Applause draws its attention. Slow, wry applause which, so far as it is aware, it has done nothing to solicit, so Quinn looks towards it only warily. And there on their left, it finds itself looking into the same hooded alcove it stole away from earlier. The first pair of clapping hands belong to Pantalone, blocking all the light from the side door as he heaves himself through it. A half-step behind him and curving in against his waist as soon as space allows, comes a pudgy blonde Quinn doesn't recognize right away. Collie calling out, "Hey, Quinny-baby!" and Cap chuckling and, last through the door, grinning vaguely like he's wandered into someone else's party, Chase McKinney.

"Petey, what'd you do? Get us out of here. Why are they clapping? What'd you do?"

He doesn't even ask it to trust him this time. He says and does nothing. Over at the side of the Funhouse, the gathered audience are picking up a long hook used to haul in boats. But they are picking it up too high. The end of it only threatens the edge of the hull. Then it rises again and makes a quick, darting swipe at Quinn's arm. It yells and scrabbles away, only to freeze when the boat rocks. The crowd screams laughter. Quinn scuttles up to Petey, grabs tight hold of him.

"Please, get us out of here. What'd you do, I don't understand?"

Somewhere over its shoulder, the blonde is mimicking its terror. The curl of the hook presses its back, once, twice, before stroking the back of its neck. On the next heartbeat, Quinn can't breathe, suddenly snagged by the throat. Hauled back, it falls choking against the side of the boat. Almost ready to go limp, to slide over and vanish into the swamp, in the last second it pulls hard to the side. The end of the hook leaves a vicious bruise on its neck but it is free, and lies on its side, out of reach in the bottom of the boat.

The laughter turns to a collective, "Aw", all disappointment.

The end of the hook comes looking again, pawing and scraping. Quinn hisses again to Petey to help. But he does nothing. He doesn't even look, sits exactly as he was when he stopped apologizing. A close call with the hook and Quinn yelps, gives the watchers another giggle, but it's not enough. The blonde lifts her ugly, grating voice again, "Flip 'em!"

"Oh, yes, Columbina, my dear, do let's. Let's flip them."

"Wait." This last and most imposing voice is Pantalone's. And despite everything that has happened, everything it has so lately learned, Quinn's heart leaps. Old instincts; _Pops is saving me._ _Pops wouldn't let them dunk me._ _I'll die and he doesn't want me dead_. But Dad doesn't call out to Quinn. "Petey!"

Now the big guy lifts his head and Quinn fumes. " _Him_ , you'll listen to him." Reaching out to beat at his legs, "Turn the damn engine back on, you stupid big dumb Hufflepuff flump, get us out of here!"

"Petey, my son, you were always my favourite child. You knew that anyway. Quinn had pretentions, but you knew. I forgive you, Petey. We're all here for you. We're going to put that hook back out and haul you right back into the family. But we need you to do one thing first. So we know you're loyal, see? So we know you and that no-good sib of yours over there haven't cooked up some hare-brained scheme, as wayward children are wont to do."

The blonde gasps, and Collie's low laugh is only seconds behind. Both getting the idea at once, it's hard to tell who exactly starts the chanting, "Throw it in! Throw it in!"

Somewhere out in the world, Quinn hears itself yelling again, all the same 'No' and 'Help', but all of it is very far away now. There's only so long you can go without an answer before you start ignoring your own question. Its only nod to strength is to bite down the scream that rises when it sees Petey shift toward it. The struggling, it can't help, and doesn't want to. It kicks, it thrashes, fights and hard and _connects_ too. _Give him bruises to remember me by._ _Christ, I'm sorry I was so hard on Wilder_ , but by then there's nothing around it but powerful arms, nothing but thin air and wild, raucous laughter. Petey's audience are crippled with it, bent double. Quinn is a prop and no more. It's nothing. Feels like nothing too, the length of time it spends in flight, the endless drop, eternity in a half second before it hits the water, and disappears.

Panic opens you up. The scream it held back rips out of it too late to do anything but tear its pressed lips apart and let water in. That first flood and you don't even sputter, because the panic deepens. You only flail once or twice, none of that desperate flip-flopping just under the surface like you see in the movies. Then you start to sink.

The hook sweeps up under its chin. This has the added advantage of grabbing its mouth shut. Quinn almost bats it away with lashing to grab on to it.

They are screaming, hysterical, when it breaks the surface again, drawn in hand over hand by Columbina. Escaping the rank, sucking mire only to be beached among the people who put it there, retching, choking up lungfuls. This is all too much like reality for the audience. It isn't funny, and they look away. Quinn lies heaving on its belly while they hook Petey's boat in. A hero's welcome, all cheers and back-slaps and he has to step across Quinn to get it. The Captain leads him inside.

The rest start to follow. McKinney pauses, beaming, to take a picture of the dripping jetsam at his feet. The blonde's heels pick their prissy one-by-one way over Quinn's head, "Ew. Does that have to come in too? Panty, can't you leave it out here until it's dried up a little, at least?"

"…You know, I can, in fact." He puts one foot to the back of the boat and sends it warbling away, out of reach. That gone, and no others close, not even knowing if it can peel itself up from the stones, where can Quinn go?

Its only saving grace is that they don't quite close the door when they leave it shivering. It is most likely so that it can hear them still laughing, but it allows it some light. Quinn can take that. And it can make decisions too, like putting both its hands down flat. It will push itself up just the very next moment it knows it won't cry. Behaviour unbecoming of a clown, crying, and there is _no_ excuse for it. The second it knows it will at least be able to rage and spit, that's when it'll push itself up.

Quite when that second will come is another matter.

Long before it is ever even a speck on the horizon, a shadow cuts the light behind it. Just the slightest roll, eyes turned over its shoulder, just to see who has come to gloat, Quinn finds McKinney standing over it. The strangest thing is, he isn't quite laughing. They've never met before, not face to face, but Quinn learned the Horsemen and their histories very well before it went to Paris. That's part of the job. Chase was part of the history and, in every picture, in every clip of TV news, the grin was in place. You can hear him laughing when he doesn't make a sound.

It doesn't quite see that just now. Barely even smiling.

He has brought a bundle and throws it so it lands in front of Quinn. With that, and not a word, he leaves again. Quinn reaches out and pulls soft folds closer. A towel, but it landed heavier than a towel when he threw it. And as it pulls, the folds open up, and Quinn sees strange weights inside. Now it pushes up. Sits straight and hides the bundle with its body in case anyone else should come to check on it.

Hidden in the towel, it finds a penknife, a narrow flashlight and a clatter of old deadbolt keys on a keychain shaped like a smiling octopus with eyes that bulge when you squeeze it. There's something else too, something smaller, which it misses until it picks the towel up to drag its face dry. A little envelope of dull green leather. The silver spade printed on it is all but worn off. Inside, a set of lockpicks, and a note folded up small. _Third floor_ , it says. _Last door on the left_.


	51. Chapter 51

"Where are they?"

Dawn finds Dylan Shrike with no clowns and his heart in his mouth. Any other morning waking up in the sudden absence of Quinn and Petey would be an unmitigated joy, the fulfilment of an impossible dream. He'd be pinching himself to check he wasn't still asleep. Today? Today their blessed _mother_ is coming to visit. Today he – and believe him, this is not easy for Dylan to accept – would not be entirely ungrateful for the support of two of the breed to whom he has had the opportunity to become accustomed.

Preferably silent support from across a rather large room, but support nevertheless. Having somebody around who knows the rules and who he has reason to trust. And it is under exactly these circumstances that Dylan can't lay hands on anyone to match the description. They have left nothing but the smell of greasepaint, and given the ownership of this establishment, that might have been here anyway.

He looks up, his last shred of hope shrivelling like a burnt-up match as he watches Jack coming down from the upper floors. "Anything?"

"Not so much as a rubber chicken."

"Jack, no jokes, _please_ , I can't do it right now."

"It's not a joke, they leave them everywhere. Can't figure out where they keep pulling them from. Lula's the only person I've seen produce more birds out of one outfit."

Lula is wandering the back corridors, searching. Dylan left her to it, walked away and shut a couple of doors between them, when he heard her calling out. "Guys, if this is a bit, which I don't think it is but Dylan would want me to ask, it's not really funny enough." He had to walk away. She's gauging humour now? There's such a thing as funny _enough_? And that was just the icing; Dylan had his fill of cake just hearing her use the word 'bit'. They've infected her, taught her their language. Take it deeper and they've turned her natural adaptability from a blessing into a curse but… But then again, he didn't want to take it any deeper. Wanted to keep things civil, at least, with Petey and Quinn. He wanted this, so that he'd have them on side this morning.

Since that didn't work out, to hell with them. He feels one hundred percent free to hold Lula's unfortunate viral condition against them.

But under his perfectly natural frustrations, more sinister doubts are starting to take hold. Until now, he's been able to keep them at bay. The first hour, he was pretty sure, from the track record reported to him, they'd gone out for food. Still, the doubts have always been there. They're really very obvious, you'd be worried about him if these worries weren't in him. For instance, it may be terribly inconvenient to have lost them, but he can't let that blind him to the fact that they are gone. How? Was someone else involved; were they taken, or told to go? Have they turned? Gone rogue again, or maybe always were rogue, only ever pretended to be less than what they are – _clowns_ – to get close to him?

Strange then, that since the creeping concern began in thoughts of her, that it is Lula who dispels it all. She comes drifting out a different door to the one she disappeared through. Brow furrowed, choking here and there on a trapped breath. "This doesn't make sense," she says, and Dylan would be inclined to agree except that her concerns don't match his. "The one person they still trust and care about in the world is coming _here_. Why would they be anywhere else?"

He hears that and stops questioning. She's right. Sometimes all it takes is for someone else to put it into words.

"So we wait for Il Dottore." The decision is spoken as it is made. "They'll come back to him." That's not what she asked him. They both know that. For the first time in his life, Dylan has trouble making her look past it. Hardly surprising; you'll always have a rough time selling a line you don't believe yourself. When that happens, you have to shut up. The very worst thing you can do is plough on, even if you think you can make it better. No matter what you think up to say, however good it sounds in your head, don't bother. "That's probably the answer," he says, with a pitiful attempt at looking like he's been an idiot up until now. "They probably went to meet him."

They wouldn't know how. Even Dylan knows no more than he needs to about how Doc is being brought here. It's a safety measure. But he tried. The lie doesn't really matter; from what he can tell, Lula isn't buying it anyway.

Then, like his efforts weren't dead enough before they left him, Jack calls down from above again. Voice muffled from facing the other way, looking out the gallery windows, "Doesn't look like they did."

"That's him? Now?"

"Floating down the street as we speak."

Curses line up to be spoken but they get stuck in Dylan's throat, looking suddenly round again to find that Lula has come up close. Calm, her eyes down away from his so he'll know she still isn't happy, she picks a speck of lint off his sweater and brushes the spot flat again. "It's fine," she says and those two words are gentle and firm, a blink-and-miss-it moment of sincerity that clears his chattering mind like the toll of a cathedral bell. Then, more like herself again, "It is _literally_ fine, because if it wasn't for you he'd be in Monte Carlo right now probably being brutalized by a pair of twins, which must be even worse than being brutalized by normal sisters because you don't even necessarily know where each strike is coming from, there's no good-cop-bad-cop, how do you even pick out the weak one for certain? You've got this, man. You're in control this time, because he owes you."

"You're on the same side this time," Jack adds. Both their points are valid, true. The effect they have on Dylan is impressive, and before he can move past that, into the vague unease that always comes over him when he's the one in need of a boost, rather than doing the boosting, they impress him again. This time it's their swift co-ordination, their capacity to follow orders Dylan is struggling to even give. "I'd let him knock," Jack says on his way to the door and, yes, that would have been Dylan's instruction. "But he saw me already. Besides, it's his place."

"Go," and Lula is pushing his arm, waving him away. "Go out so you can come in again." Not as eloquent as Dylan would have put it, would have told himself to act natural, not show that they've been waiting, that waiting has been murder and the wait had better have been worth it, but the sentiment carries over. And the only reason she doesn't suggest a momentary flash of danger and distaste to go along with his entrance is because she wouldn't play it that way.

He leaves, picking up the notebook he's been working at all night so he can come in studying it. He decides on the brief rush now to get upstairs. That way he can walk out onto the gallery. When Doc first sees him, Dylan will be looking down.

It also gives him a door for a screen. He's able to watch. Credit him with some personal growth since all this began; less than twenty percent of his desire to keep an eye on proceedings has anything to do with ensuring no harm befalls the only two Horsemen he's got.

Doc's arrival is not what he imagined. Or maybe Dylan just isn't used to seeing these inherently social monsters travelling alone. There is, it seems, only so much they can do without a playmate, only so funny they can be without somebody else clued in on the gag. Still, as an old hand and a community leader, Il Dottore is meeting and exceeding all demands made upon him. In fact when you consider his situation, extrapolate from what you know how he's probably spent the last couple of days, he's putting on a decent show.

He arrives all in black, a long coat with a high collar, and from Dylan's elevated viewpoint his face is hidden beneath the wide brim of a flat-topped hat. A half-step behind him, Jack is carrying a black leather Gladstone bag with gleaming silver clasps, and a white spot on either side each marked with a red cross. A subtler look; no less a parody but accepting, at least, the gravity of their circumstances.

Lula, with the benefit of everything she's learned from them, stands to greet him with all the 1950s warmth of a truly gracious hostess. "Welcome home. You must be the Mother we've all heard so much about."

"And my two beautiful children? Where are they?"

With a shrug, sitting down at one of the marble tables, Jack says, "We thought they'd be with you."

Doc is still for a second, maybe nodding very slightly but only to himself. He casts his eyes around and over the crayon-etched tables and when he next speaks there is nothing of the stage in his voice. "In that case," and he drops himself into another of the chairs, "while I very much appreciate your efforts, this gag will become terrible very quickly. Wherever Shrike is waiting to spring from, could someone tell him to get it over with?"

"Ah, fine," Dylan sighs. He hardly knows he's doing it until it's done. Out from behind the door, notebook hanging unexamined from his hand, he's on the stairs again before he remembers he's supposed to be looking down, there's supposed to be a psychological powerplay happening, there's supposed to be this whole big scene with blocking and sweeping cinematography and all the angles worked out but you know what? Screw it.

They may all be performers, but they've been off-script for some time now. At some point they have all wandered off stage into a very real world, drifting so that they barely noticed. Out in the wings now, out in the dark, Dylan is going to play this however he damn well pleases.

"Let's start," he says, and fiercely pointing, "with what the hell is going on in your organization."

"Let's _start_ with Petey and Quinn."

Such absolute calm, and even at a time like this a thin and immovable smile. Doc's eyes fix Dylan's and the merest touch of the old chill stiffens his back. This time, however, he's got back-up. People to cover the falter when his throat dries up. Jack cuts in, "We don't know." He sounds exactly like himself. Maybe the eight-inch ruby-topped caduceus brooch Doc is setting aside so he can unbutton his coat doesn't bother him. "Near as we can guess they left in the early hours. None of us heard anything. But one of the boats is gone so they did it themselves. No one came to get them."

"Petey put my Arlechinno in a boat and nobody heard it fighting. There ought to have been some token scuffle, for decency's sake. Whatever called them away must have been very urgent indeed…"

By which time Dylan has recovered and with all the strength he's been building up, "Short version – you don't know and we don't know. Which makes it pretty pointless beating that question around any longer. How about we get back to mine?"

"Mr Shrike, the night before last, I woke up hogtied in a hotel room of much lower quality than that to which I am accustomed, where I would be languishing still had I not been ruthlessly sniffed out by two rather bloody-minded Englishwomen who, as far as I can gather, ran afoul of a niece of mine known as Columbina. At what point exactly am I supposed to have picked up anything I can offer you?"

Not halfway through that, Dylan began to shake his head. More than just his natural mistrust of this creature and all his kind tells him to push, not to be shamed or scared into shutting up. There is more to this. "That's nice, that's a nice story. Reminds me of the one where you sent your psychotic little so-called _children_ -"

Lula straightens sharply. "Don't call them psychotic; I _like_ his so-called children." She's pouting. As words themselves it's barely an interruption. Another day, Dylan wouldn't even stop talking. Today, though she means more than she says. There's a very old magician's trick, to push a long steel pin through a balloon without popping it. The part you never see is that, when the pin is removed, the holes it leaves are real and the balloon goes down quiet and easy. That's what she did; he was getting too riled, too close to the balloon popping. Lula pushed the pin through.

He nods to her, trying to present it as an apology, rather than the gratitude it is.

"- Your _messengers_ came to me, and the message turns out to be that me and my team are in trouble. Trouble, it transpired, of a decidedly lethal bent. And now I find out that trouble was coming from inside your own house, Doctor. You tell me; what am I supposed to think?"

With that, Dylan scores a major victory, not just in this particular day but in his life; he shuts a clown up. Whether Doc has anything to add or not, he falls quiet in the acceptance of a fair point well made.

Generally, there are few sadder sights in life than a clown left with nothing to say. 'Generally' doesn't include Dylan, though. Dylan will take this image to his grave.

But he is denied the joy of waiting for an answer, of playing the same nasty game they played with him in Monaco. His perfect moment is snapped in two by the sound of a boat engine coming up too fast outside, stopping too short.

Four heads all snap round. The first second is stunned, the second races, all of them trapped in their own silences, looking for explanations. At the third Jack speaks, "Alright, I thought Dylan was being kind of harsh? But you have to admit, Doc, that doesn't sound good for you either."

Doc rolls his eyes to Dylan, "My children are smarter than yours…"

Leaving Dylan to explain, " _We_ brought him here."

"But… Guys, what's the problem?" and Lula's smile might tremble but she keeps in place. "Isn't it…? I mean, doesn't it _have_ to be Petey and… And I can't hear Quinn."

They'll never decide on a course of action. In-fighting will destroy any consensus that might ever try to form. Luckily, they don't have to. The decision is made for him. Whoever is outside has a key, and before they can even factor the scratch of the lock into their decision-making, the door is flung open. Petey, entirely alone, charges inside. Ignoring even his beloved Mom, he goes immediately to Lula's purse, hanging on the end of the stair-rail. From it, he takes a pair of handcuffs. Then he returns to Doc, who sinks with something like relief when he is waved a brief hello. That, however, is all the acknowledgement he gets. Petey reaches immediately down and grabs the scrub-green handkerchief from his top pocket, then turns away again. This time he keeps right on walking, and as he goes he grabs one of the chairs by its back, carrying it under his arm like a newspaper

He doesn't stop until he is in one of the side rooms and has slammed the door.

With quiet consideration, and something like fear, all sniping and distrust is forgotten. The three magicians and Doc all rise from the table. A second or two apart, perhaps, and drifting, but really as one, they creep slowly to the still-reverberating door.

By the time Lula has the nerve to press it open, Petey is all but prepared. He has tied the two ends of the handkerchief in a knot and slides it over his head to rest at his brow. Then he puts the chair down by the window, and cuffs his own left wrist to the hoop that holds back the cream silk drapes. He sits down and tugs the handkerchief down over his eyes.

His right hand unfurls from a fist to show a crumpled note. Dylan, with thumb and forefinger only, picks it up and flattens it. Reading aloud, " _Don't talk in front of me_."

Doc steps forward. With the flustered sigh of any clucking mother, he eases away the handkerchief on one side. The eye uncovered is round and unblinking, and very afraid, though Doc gives no sign of noticing that. "Alright, kiddo, what's the game?"

Petey's unchained hand balls up, pulling an extended thumb away from his chin. Then the other hand makes the same shape and he clicks both sets of knuckles together twice.

 _No game_.


	52. Chapter 52

_Dad told me to and I did it_.

That's the chorus. Petey tells his whole tale, with Doc translating, but that keeps coming up. And maybe you're like Doc and too worried about him to thinking about it, or like Lula and it would never occur to you to think badly of him, or like Jack and you know how it feels, your sympathy blinds you. Maybe. Or maybe you're like Dylan and you really hear it. No, you _see_ it. The complexity of how the hands move, the weaving, this is a sentiment that means a lot to him. Petey wants it expressed in exactly this way, these words.

He could say _Dad made me do it_. That's easier, simpler. Even better, _Dad made me do it_ puts the responsibility elsewhere. Petey would be absolved. But, and this is evident in everything he does, from having trouble making eye contact to refusing to unchain himself from the wall, that's not what happened.

 _Dad told me to and I did it_. Every repeat and he's hammering down his own guilt.

If you're Dylan, and your suspicions mean you're really, truly listening, you realize pretty quickly, Petey blames nobody but himself. So what if he can't explain why he did half of these things? That, to him, is no excuse.

Doc tries telling him to calm down. Lula tells him he's being too hard on himself. Both of these are met with a similar repeat – _Quinn can't swim_.

Dylan, past his folded arms and his better judgement, "Start at the start. Take your time."

By this, finally, some semblance of order forms. What before were disparate scraps – the sign equivalent of stammering, of broken phone calls and too much trouble, of what they are all too familiar with lately – are arranged into a story.

 _Quinn was sleeping._ _I woke it up and took it in the boat to the Big Top._

"Stop." All eyes turn to Dylan. More than one pair hold a little disdain. Surely it's a little soon to interrupt? He's the one who told Petey to tell it, after all. He ought to give him a chance. But there is one very obvious counter-argument, which is simply that Dylan told him to start the beginning. And he hasn't. "Why'd you do that? What made you get up in the first place, and waken Quinn, and take it back there in the middle of the night? It fought so hard to get away from there, and you brought it back. Why'd you do that?"

 _Dad told me to and I-_

"And you did, I know, I get that, but how did he tell you? You never left this building, not since I arrived anyway."

 _Called me_ , and Petey points. The answers, for now, are all still very simple and shallow. This time he means one of the cell phones on the table, the middle one. Doc reaches out and picks it up. "This isn't one of yours," and Petey shakes his head. "So where did it come from?"

What happens next is very specific. First Petey opens his mouth as if the answer is right there. Had he only a tongue, it would just flow from him, a simple explanation. Then he draws back again. Like some voice in the back of his mind just yelled out his name, his gaze turns inward, and he furrows, squints. The reasons he's reaching for are there, yes, but there's a locked door between him and them.

Doc has no way of understanding, but Lula's breath catches. A second after that, Jack wheels away from where he's standing, cursing under his breath.

"Shut up a second," Dylan tells him.

"You know what that look means, same as I do."

" _Shut up_ a second," and Dylan leans in close across the table. "Petey, you're good at what you do. So you know us, right? You did the reading. You know the history and all the players. So think very carefully and tell me if you happened to cross paths with _Chase McKinney_."

A mutter, a shuffle like disturbing the pigeon roost, of swearing and bitten-off groans goes up when he nods. In the midst of this the listening audience hardly notice that the nod turns quickly to a shake. Only Doc is still listening when Petey twists back to the wall, bringing his two hands together again to speak more eloquently. "Different, he says. The same only different. Something not right with him."

"No," Jack says. "There are only two-"

Lula mutters, "Thank God."

"And we know where Merritt is."

But on this one topic, on this one ugly anomaly of 'same only different', a knot in this thread they've started pulling, Dylan stays quiet. Petey goes on. They've dismissed the one thing he was concerned about, and he's remembered McKinney now. That leads him back to the crowd that were gathered at the side door of the Funhouse. He has Rebecca explained to him, and explains in turn, _Dad said he'd be my friend again if I threw Quinn in the water._ _He told me to do it and I did it._ _Quinn can't swim_.

He has to be coaxed past that part. There are, perhaps, moments of importance in the rest of the story. He was brought back inside into the heart of his family, made much of as a good and loyal son, celebrated. Eventually Quinn crept in, dried itself off somewhere and, with a freshly-painted face and all the defiance of a conquered soldier sent to face the Coliseum lions, was found on the main stairwell playing _The Entertainer_ on a child's toy keytar with batteries so old the sound was eerie and Theremin-warped. _Would have been proud_ , Petey tells their mother, leaning close, and this time making eye contact. Really pressing the point home, _Was very funny and mean to Dad._ _Make you proud_.

He describes an exuberant performance of blithe defeat on the stairwell, a drained drone rendition of _Hail To The Chief_ played below sarcastic surface grovelling and an absolute refusal to refer to anybody as 'Pops' anymore. "You got me!" it declared. "I won't say it was fair and square because there was nothing neither fair nor square about it but you definitely got me. You got me the only way you could, which was to get Petey to get me. Don't know how you did that, but you did. Congratulations. That was smart; you never could have got me on your own."

There's more of this. There's more tale and it's probably heart-breaking. Petey certainly looks like some part of his soul has been torn off and taken away somewhere he'll never be able to stitch it back. Quinn got frogmarched away by Columbina, still providing its own soundtrack. Petey got a private audience with Pantalone, now that he's the favourite son.

Before he'll ask how that went – he's already got a pretty fair idea – Dylan borrows the diligent translator and tries to elicit a different kind of tale.

"Mind telling me how long Pantalone's been planning this? And how he managed to execute it – if Lula will pardon my pun – under your adorably colourful nose?"

For the second time inside an hour, Doc flounders. Dylan doesn't enjoy this round quite so much as the first. For starters, he'd really like an answer, but that's not the half. Truth is, he knows how it feels to have let your own people down this badly, to have been anywhere but where you needed to be, to have known nothing when you should have been working hardest to stay on top of things. So, yes, he burns. Yes, it is painful to stand this close to someone who let all this trouble brew and missed it. But if he ever had any sympathy with a clown, this is it.

Doc begins, "I…" but gets no further. After a second, Petey taps his arm, and Doc reads another flicker of fingers to come up with a look of mild amazement on his face. Patting Petey's shoulder, "Very perceptive, young man. Very mature." Turning back to Dylan, "My son here thinks it might be a good idea if I simply admit that I do not know. Petey feels that might go a long way towards smoothing over some of the potential tensions between you and I."

It's not an awful idea. The logic was pretty sound. Dylan bobs his head in appreciation, just so they'll know he's considered it when he tells Petey, "For the record, this is one time when spooky, grinning omniscience wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest."

Doc sighs. "You just can't get a break, can you, Dylan?"

"You listen to me, _Doctor_ -"

"Hey, hey, woah!" Lula again, pushing another pin through another balloon before it can burst. Shuffling a little on the polished floor she darts between them, hands up to call for peace. In their first moment of quiet, when their glare breaks to look at her, she kneels by Petey's chair. "Listen, we're going to let you two finish, no problem. You can take all the time in the world to fight. You can fight until you can't remember what you were ever fighting about. But Petey was not finished. And I for one think the end of this story is kind of important, don't you?"

Jack catches her drift and chooses the inevitable side. "Oh, you mean the part where somehow he gets back here to tell us all this so we're not completely in the dark? Thanks for that, by the way, don't know if anybody's said that yet…"

Doc and Dylan swap glances. In mutters, amongst themselves, the former begins, "Say what you like about my children, they show more respect for their elders than yours."

"I don't have kids. I have moody teenagers. You've got all this ahead of you."

"All the more reason to train them now. Have you tried-?"

"What? Baseball bats? Rabbit-warren prisons?"

"At least I've never hypnotised any of mine," but with that, and perhaps knowing he is running out of justifications, coming damn close to losing the argument, Doc turns his attention back to Petey. "They're right, son. Come on, what's the rest?"

Petey lowers his eyes again. He reaches up, and seems to be on the edge of tugging his blindfold down again. Doc's hand lashes up and whips it away before he can. Left with nowhere else to hide he goes on. Slowly at first, fumbling. No one rushes him. For too, too long, there is only Doc's voice feeling his inexpert way along the words, and the occasional mumbles as he asks for clarification.

 _Dad talked forever._ _Happy about all this._ _Winning._ _Wouldn't talk about you, Mom. "There's no point."_ _Made me scared so happy to see you._ _Don't like the Rebecca-woman._ _Not funny._ _Don't know what she's for._ _He's playing her and she doesn't know it._ _But couldn't tell her that._ _Couldn't do anything._ _Just did anything Dad told me._ _Was supposed to._ _That was in my head._ _So when he called me I did what he told me, in the boat I did what he told me._ _In the house I didn't do anything because he was just talking._ _Bad plans._ _People dead._ _Very soon._ _But he told me come back here._ _Watch, find out._ _Tell him everything-_

This last is hard for him to express. It brings back everything that had subsided, all the panic and the fear that was on him when he first flung the door open, all the determination not to hurt anybody. His cuffed arm tenses, pulling the chain taut. The rattle does something to help. His other hand flies out, pointing at the note still in Dylan's hand. _Don't talk in front of me_.

It's Lula who takes hold of his flailing hands, pulling them together. Effectively, she silences him. "Hey, no. No, hush. Think about it. First up, it's not your fault. And second, it's over now." He tries to shake his head but she nods hers harder, holding his gaze with disbelieving eyes. Half a smile, a breathless laugh, "Look, how did you feel at the time? Think about it and show me. You, deep down under the weirdo mesmerist bullshit, how did you feel?"

Petey thinks, then frees himself just enough to stick out his arms. Eyes half shut, mouth open, the pantomime of a sleepwalker.

"Right, exactly. And how do you feel now?" Giving him just long enough to think again, Lula doesn't wait for him to talk himself back out of it. "See? You're fine. You did the thing, so it's over. Nobody blames you either."

 _Quinn can't swim._

Jack cuts in, "Believe me, man, Quinn's over it. I got stuck with it talking about you for hours; it knows you wouldn't hurt it unless something was _badly_ wrong."

"Yeah, and quite honestly, we need you right now. So get up. You're not even being funny; I couldn't be more disappointed."

Dylan smiles, watching the two of them work. In a very small and private way, but a definite smile. He knows it is a smile because he finds his eyes slowly sliding sideways, coming to rest in the side of Doc's head. A very definite smile because he has to work so hard to straighten it off his face when Doc's gaze comes biting back, and because he has to resist the choked laugh that tries to escape him. Has to bite down hard on, 'You were saying, about my kids?'

Doc straightens, makes himself a presence again. "Okay, son, now the chains are all very noble and all, but very dangerous. What if the building caught fire? The key, please, Miss May?"

Lula, Jack and Dylan, all as one, "They're trick cuffs."

Petey's mouth drops open, the slightest noise of disdain escaping them. He glares as if he's been fooled when Lula reaches out and twists the cuffs in opposite directions at the chain. They pop open his hand drops free. Grudgingly, he lets her help him up. They leave with tentative laughter. It never quite gets off the ground but they're trying. "What do you take me for? I don't just _casually_ carry the real thing, big fella."

Jack mutters, "Henley does."

"Oh, she does not, that's a silly rumour."

"She _does_. Danny told me."

"It's Danny's rumour, _obviously_. And before you even ask me why he would make that up, that rumour out of all possible rumours, _handcuffs_ , Jack. _Control_."

He tells her she's twisted and there's a brief spat when all of a sudden his story changes and he's seen the handcuffs in question with his own eyes. But Dylan isn't listening anymore. His thoughts have returned to something that bothered him earlier. When Petey described his meeting with Chase McKinney, he changed his mind midsentence. Didn't even seem too sure who he really spoke to. The same only different, he said. Looked like Chase but something off.

Same only different. And control.

Revelation goes through him like a flame through kindling. On fire, stunned down soft, "Oh Christ, that goddamn idiot… Sneaky son of a bitch, I'm going to kill him if he's not already dead."

"Who?" says Doc, stopping on his way to the door. "McKinney? From what I know of that gentleman, you may have to take a number and wait your turn."

"Not him. _Atlas_."


	53. Chapter 53

In another part of the city, far away from Dylan's slow-dawning wrath, Danny shudders. Henley glances round at him. Seeing that he is just as puzzled by the sudden shake as she is, and feeling nothing in the room around them that might have solicited it, she falls back on the ready explanation of an easy cliché. Danny is there too. Both of them thinking at once, that someone must have walked over his grave.

But even if he knew that Dylan was instead threatening to _dig_ it, Danny wouldn't be too surprised. He _might_ even have a hard time blaming his friend and leader for such a sentiment. Blame is usually something he's pretty good at, too.

Then again, so is superiority. So is quick-wittedness. So is pride and Danny is proud to say, he arrived at the conclusion Dylan is just now drawing _hours_ ago.

That conclusion? Danny made a mistake. A big one. _Huge_. Merritt helped, and he'd appreciate it if no one was allowed to forget that, or the fact that inspiration for the entire endeavour came initially from Dylan himself, with his whole left-hand-right-hand philosophy but, in essence, boiled down, without the normally-prerequisite pinch of salt, Danny made a mistake.

As a direct result of this mistake, he is currently standing straight as a fencepost against a cold concrete wall with a rabbit which has given up struggling held tight to his chest.

By his feet, the crowbar from the room with the trapdoor under the floor and the razor-tipped rapier that posed as an umbrella and sliced his arm. And on the other side of those, a couple of feet to his left, on the other side of the red door, Henley is holding the same awkward position. Pressing back even harder, as if she might just fade through and go tumbling into the hallway, she's got no rabbit. What she does have is Merritt's phone held down by her side, tipped very slightly away from the wall so she can see it. She flips for the hundredth time if it's once through a folder of pictures. The photograph of Quinn, for instance, drenched and raging on the stones outside. It has been labelled 'Friendly' though it looks anything but. Pictures too of the monitor banks; those were useful. Those showed all the rooms, the ones they had and hadn't visited and, by pointing up possible connections and by simply being arranged in the right order, brought Danny and Henley to this final room.

The last file is not a picture but a note. _Find the door._ _Get up against it._ _Bring Fluffy_.

Danny has already explained what happened. Aside from those within the conspiracy itself, Henley knows more than anybody about it. To Danny's mind that ought to be enough to satisfy her. Gauging _that_ , however, was never really one of those things he's so good at. He feels her lingering over the note and knows exactly what's coming. As she breathes in deep to speak, to ask him again what the hell was going through his head, he pre-empts the question. A hard hiss, a stage whisper, "It was a rough night, okay? For everybody. All I could think about is that Lula could have died, and even if I could have gotten that out of my head, I would still have been left with a dozen other reasons to take action, including the thought that under other circumstances it might have been you in that box. And it was only ever meant to be a back-up plan, we were never supposed to actually _need_ it. That was the _last_ thing I wanted. But then, in Monaco, when things started to go wrong…"

He stops, sighs. This is closer to the truth that other answers he's given her. Danny's not sure how that happened. Cutting her off, refusing to hear the question, it was supposed to put him in charge of the explanation. He'd say exactly as much as he wanted to and no more. And yet, somehow, here he is. And he can't even stop _now_ – her eyes are in the side of his head and they force him to keep going. All of this and all she had to do was inhale; not a bad trick, really.

"Dylan lies, Henley. I don't mean that to sound how it does. He doesn't think anything of it, he thinks it's part of his job. And in a way, maybe it is, but he lies and he manipulates and… We just thought it would be a good idea, considering there were lives at stake, considering it's a mistake we've made before, if we could make sure somebody was held back. Someone in reserve, someone who could be objective and could help-"

"Who could manipulate Dylan right back."

"Exactly," and for a moment he's alight, overjoyed, she gets it, she understands. But it's like cutting yourself on broken glass, little fragments too small to be seen. You don't feel it at first. You don't feel it until you feel the warm blood running down your finger. Too late Danny spots the yawning chasm between 'understanding' and 'liking'. Fading off, "It wasn't like that."

"Yes it was."

She is unbearable when she fixes on something. Once her mind is made up, it's over. Anything said thereafter is the beginning of a new argument, and she'll win that one too because she already knows where she stands. Immovable, unreachable, Henley decides on a position and there she stays. And when she's _right_ , as she coincidentally is just now, it all gets ten times worse.

He suffers her judgement for a minute or so. Gradually he starts to look down at the rabbit in his arms. Such peaceable animals, rabbits. They just live from one twitch of the nose to the next. No judgement, no blame. Rabbits never hold your mistakes against you.

A few long strokes over soft ears and Danny finds the backbone to try, "You wouldn't be saying any of this if the plan had wo-"

"It didn't."

And so they come right back round to where they started; standing with their backs to the wall, pressed close. If anything, Danny is holding a little tighter to the rabbit now. If anything, Henley is studying the pictures more intently.

Danny and Henley might be standing still but they're just one part of a plan which is very much in motion. Quinn is part of it too. That may or may not explain its twitchy, hyperactive wheeling and pacing. When Collie dragged it away off the stairwell, she threw it here, in Pantalone's private den. No marble here, no touch of Venetian decadence. Here there is wall-to-wall carpet in sickening seventies orange swirls, leather reclining chairs, a television which is rigged to only show mismatched halves of different sitcoms squashed between endless rounds of vintage infomercials, though by its sheer enormity alone it is a joke even before you turn it on. On one of its weaving rushes from wall to wall, Quinn jumps up two-footed onto a beer-stained plaid couch and grabs a stuffed moose head by what it imagines to be the moose-equivalent of cheeks. Through gritted teeth into the animal's false grin, "None of this makes any sense!"

Collie, seated by the door, breathes the slightest suggestion of a laugh.

"What's funny? That's my problem with it. My problem is that none of this is funny, and that, as I explained to my great Canadian pal here, none of it makes any sense. We used to make sense _to us_ if nobody else and now Petey's throwing me in canals? We don't even have internal logic anymore. Without that we're just idiots. I've been trying to figure it out, that's why I tried to get out of here in the first place."

"Mmh, I oughta slap you black and blue for that, the trouble you landed me in…" Quinn quails. It's genuine, instinctive; the threat of violence from Aunt Collie is never to be taken lightly. It forgets even to exaggerate. Normally that would be enough to cripple it with guilt and regret but right now? Right now, who cares? All Quinn's jokes have forsaken it anyway. "But I won't. You know I've always liked you, Arlechinno. Not as much as the Big Guy, but him and me go back centuries. Really, I'm _awful_ glad it was Cap had to treat you rough and not me."

"Because I called him out for trying to murder Lula May." Quinn jumps down from the couch, hits the ground already running, already half-falling to kneel at Collie's feet. What it intends to say next brushes close to being a real plea for help and understanding, to being one-hundred percent serious, so it grabs the two huge hands between its own, makes itself snivel, thickens its accent into Cagney-parody, a black-and-white moll at the moment of betrayal. In short, it gives itself every comic crutch it can come up with. "Collie, why are you doing this? It's straight _murder,_ I tells ya. It ain't us, Collie, it just ain't us!"

The electric blue smirk drawstring-tightens into a pout. One hand fights free and strokes Quinn's still-damp hood where hair ought to be.

"Ours not to wonder why, baby."

"Doc doesn't know about this."

The slightest tightening in Collie's face, like all her soft skin was turned to polished wood. "Of course he does."

"Then where is he? Collie, there's blind faith and then there's just blind. If you just _think_ about it, just for _one_ second, you'll-"

The words stop in its throat when Pantalone steps into the room. The swinging door bounces off Quinn's boots. It knows in that same heartbeat, as it scrambles up from the floor and scuttles into the dark of the farthest corner, that the timing is too perfect. He was out there listening. He chose his moment to shut it up. It stands as tall as it can bear to. Fear keeps it from lifting its head, but its eyes are up, burning into him.

"Well, young clown?" he beams from the door. "Have you got anything to say for yourself?"

It denies him even the pleasure of 'No, sir', and only shakes its head.

"I thought as much. Collie, a word?"

He nods her out to the hall. When Collie pauses to straighten her minute waitress' uniform, he grabs her by the collar and drags her.

Quinn finds itself looking at the dentally-gifted moose again. "The hell are you smiling at? I'm gonna die. Of all the times that went before when I said I was gonna, and even the times I really did genuinely think I was gonna, this is the actual time. This is it, Strawberry; this is Goodnight Sweetheart. This is the curtain call. This means nothing to me, oh, Vien-no, wait, that's not right, but the short version is, I'm gonna be pining for the fjords pretty damn soon, and you're laughing down off the wall at me. But what can I expect, huh? You belong to _him_ , after all."

Quinn could go on. Quinn's got a whole lot more it would like to say to this foolish dead animal, about where its loyalties lie, about how it really ought to have a little more spine, despite having its real spine severed for the head to be removed. It's a metaphorical spine Quinn's talking about and it's fully prepared to explain that, to make this stupid moose face up to the error of its ways.

But it must have been a word Panty wanted and no more; Collie is back long before the rant runs out of steam.

She's back with the elastic laugh gone out of her face. Different, this time, to when she turned crystalline and mean before. Now she is slack, looking just a little lost. She is back and one hand is out in front of her, carrying wads of dampened cotton.

Inside Quinn's mouth turns to sand. It chokes before it can say, "Collie? What'd Pops say? What's all the pads for?"

Collie takes a step forward. Quinn takes one back but it was already in the corner. It's got nowhere to go, nothing to do but stand and watch as this once-beloved aunt gets close and closer still. By then it can smell the faint metallic chemicals of make-up remover.


	54. Chapter 54

"Now, Quinn, sugar, I know you're upset. But that's no cause for acting foolish now. Don't make this any tougher than it has to be."

"Like hell! Maybe this is a _really_ stupid thing to say but freaking _fight me_ , Collie!"

These are the voices that draw Chase McKinney curiously down that hallway. Head cocked to keep one ear turned toward them, half-dancing, he listens in as Columbina takes up the invitation. Doesn't sound like much of a fight though. Sounds like Quinn gets pinned down pretty quick and the rest is just for show. It kicks, yes, it struggles, there are some solid thumps as a boot goes flying off it. But it knew when it yelled that it wasn't going to win.

And yes, by the way, we still have to refer to the McKinney wandering the Funhouse as Chase.

Be under no illusions – you are not the only one who figured it out. If you had to wait for Danny to explain, you were way behind. Even those who ran neck and neck with Dylan were late to the party. Panty and Rebecca gave the game away with some certainty. The very brightest of you, however, would have had it the second you asked yourselves a very simple question; back in Rome, with things the way they were, and Jack and Lula how they were, would the Merritt _you_ know and put up with have ditched them for an ad-hoc, dangerous and distinctly undesirable sit-down with a brother he finds boring at best, and at his worst repellent? Things the way they were, would he have let himself be caught?

Easy, isn't it, when you think of it like that?

But whenever the penny dropped, it doesn't matter. Just know, we still have to call him Chase, for now. It's to do with blowing his cover. Keeping up his Chase impression is already exhausting, emotionally as well as physically; you try being so thoroughly disgusted with yourself for hours on end. Remind him of his true self, and he'll be new-aware of what he is mimicking, what those around him think he is right now. You might drive him over the edge. Merritt has work to do here, he can do without arousing his own contempt.

So _Chase_ oozes down that corridor, okay? _Chase_ comes to the door with Quinn and Collie behind it just as the yelling subsides. _Chase's_ hand is wrapped around the hollow plastic hilt of a joke knife he stole from Valerie, the kind with a blade that pushes back into the handle on a spring.

He hangs there at the door, hands in his pockets though that's mostly to hide the knife. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he looks just as if there was a hook in midair that had him by the collar, the weightlessness of a puppet put up in storage. As ever, he drifts on the warm cushion of his blithe, idiot grin.

He is waiting when the divine Miss Columbina opens the door, dipping a little at the knees so her hair doesn't get pushed flat by the lintel. One fist is closed on cotton stained red, yellow and blue. Over her arm, a damp hoodie all river-must and Quinn's clunky boots. It seems like a nice gesture, at first glance. Getting the kid all cleaned up, taking away its wet clothes.

Then again, Quinn was wearing a lot more than that when Chase saw it hauled up out of the canal.

And when you look again, you see that the colours of the items which have been taken match the colours on the cotton. They both bear the loud diamond pattern of the traditional harlequin. They are Quinn's costume, its flag. Its identity.

That last one is what really starts (let's struggle through this, let's make the effort, let's keep up the pretence however much it stings) _Chase_ 's blood boiling.

Columbina doesn't look her bouncy self. She tries to edge past him, to move along. Chase won't allow it. "Sounded like something juicy was going on in there," he tries. And it is testament to his performance, if nothing else, that this consummate clown with all her layers of defence against expressing real emotion cannot hide the lightning-blast of hate that runs through her. "What's happening to that naughty little… sister? Brother? Help me."

"No family of mine no more," Collie mutters. "Now I have to take this stuff to the boss-man so if you wouldn't mind? Move it."

"Hey, wait! Can't I visit the little… fella? Maybe it needs some comfort and cuddles and commiserating."

"Do what you want, only get out of my way." On that, she shoves him. Semi-polite, remembering he's a guest here in even in her frustration. Still leaves a bruise, though. He gets the feel she could put him right through the wall if she put her mind to it. But at the moment when they are closest she feels the blunt plastic tip of the knife against her stomach. The shock of it stops her. Once she knows what's happening she'll laugh, she'll pull away. But there's one second where Chase has her full attention, locked eye-contact. He maintains it, waiting for something to happen.

When it doesn't, he jabs again with the little dagger, the spring inside it squeaking. And again. The held breath hisses out of Collie. When she draws another it begins immediately to shake as a laugh. The look in her eyes changes. Looking like she might, for instance, put her mind to it and put him right through the wall.

He is saved by a third voice chiming in; Quinn, barely peering around the doorframe, one beady eye narrowed in hate. It calls out, "There's a button on the end of the handle."

Chase glances down, sees what it means, and jabs it with the heel of his hand. Collie has just enough time to curse herself for waiting so long. By then, the little needle that shoots out of the blunt tip has pierced her powder-pink smock and the skin beneath it. She snatches once at Chase's lapel before the sedative drops her to her knees, and then the floor.

Chase looks to the half-hidden face, still hanging back in Pantalone's den. He reaches up to tip a hat he isn't currently wearing. The intensity of his accent slipping just a little, "Much obliged."

"I know she's down and it's a dick move, but I still really want to kick her… " It comes creeping out, head ducked down so he can't see its face. Exploring toes, which have evidently never seen the light of day, tip Collie's chin, but no more. Still without raising its eyes it mutters, "You look familiar, by the way. Did we meet once before, in Paris?"

"Yes."

"I clocked it as soon as you give me all that stuff before…"

"Don't suppose you were able to hold on to any of that, were you?"

The slightest noise of disdain escapes it. With speed and determination it produces the torch from the back of its waistband, points at its boots, scattered where Collie dropped them, "The penknife is in the toe of one of them." The lockpicks were hidden in the battery compartment of the toy keytar it was playing on the stairwell earlier. The ring of bolt keys is behind the fake plastic teeth of the moose head on the wall.

Chase doesn't go immediately for the penknife. He picks up the boots themselves by their laces and holds them out to it. Quinn pulls away. "I… I'm not allowed 'em. Forget it." It drops the subject, along with itself so it can pick up Collie's shoulders. "Help me. Get her feet."

Carrying the dead weight amazon is a struggle, even with both of them lifting. Both in straining and to check over its shoulder where it's going, Quinn finally has to lift its head.

Collie didn't _quite_ take all its paint off. The pale base is practically untouched. The colours, however, are gone. If they remain at all it is as faded pastel streaks in the white, little flicks, dragged edges that look rough and unkind. The red diamonds it used to wear above its eye have been eradicated so thoroughly the skin beneath shows through. Unused to sunlight, it looks the same as the feet, pale to the point of grey, almost translucent. It doesn't take much for Chase to imagine that effect all over and to realize, when Quinn isn't a clown, it's barely real.

With a little extra lift, and as much respect as their remaining strength allows – that being virtually none – they heave Collie onto Pantalone's couch. Quinn sits a second on the arm, catching its breath. One hand reaches out and snatches the perfectly round afro clean off the neat, close cornrows of Collie's head. The other hand pushes inside through an invisible slit and begins to empty the compartment inside. "So?" and it tosses away the cigarettes, pockets the lighter. "You don't belong here and you got me loose," and it reclaims a stick of red greasepaint. Pencilling three hasty diamonds over Collie's eyebrow, "Guessing you want me to help you some way, hm?"

It gets about forty euro, a speedboat key, blue lipstick and an electric buzzer, of the sort used to give a shock with a handshake, while he explains. "Want out of here, mostly. But there's two more of mine here. Have to get them first."

Quinn shakes its head. "I already told Wilder this." Somehow it is still digging around inside Collie's wig. "No way you can get the door open without Dad."

"Oh, he's going to open the door for me, don't worry about that. But there's no time for what you might call finesse."

"Ram raid sort of prison break, huh? Okay. I mean, sounds suicidal, but okay. Where do you want me?"

"I need you to make suicide as unlikely as possible." Of all the possible answers Quinn could give, it hands him the last item from the wig, a small black pistol. "I appreciate you're not having a great day but however black the humour gets, that's not funny."

"Take it. You pull the trigger once for a silly distraction, twice for a dart. But careful how you use it; it's like your knife there, it won't fire but once."

He tosses up. But he _has_ been feeling pretty vulnerable now that he's no longer armed so in the end he snatches it from the offering palm. Testing its non-existent weight, his grip, he taps Collie's platform heel with the muzzle. "You see this obstacle here? You see how we removed it? This here house is just full of obstacles, Quinn my friend. Now, I'm no longer in control of the time frame. The ram-raid, as you called it, could kick off any minute now. How many obstacles do you think you could similarly remove?"

It takes a minute for what he's asking to really sink in. It rises in a series of mean, lopsided smiles, brief bursts of them bubbling up with dark laughs. "Real sneaky black-ops stuff, man. I love it. Call me Agent." Then it forces its face straight, stands to attention. "I better get started right away." It takes the keys out of its pocket again and wheedles a particular one off the ring. Pressing it into his hand, "Here, lock Collie in for me. The stuff in that knife won't hold her long."

Rattling with new energy, it's practically out the door before he can call to it. "You might start in your father's room. He's not there himself but I have it on good authority that's where you'll find Rebecca Dasko."

"You know I was just trying to be hurtful when I said you weren't Petey's favourite no more?"

"Go."

For the real stubborn souls amongst you, for the resolute non-believers for whom it isn't even enough to show you the red rash just starting to show at the edges of this so-called Chase's facial hair from spirit gum and too much scratching, surely this is enough? Surely this counts as a good deed? Finding a clown reduced to a ragged half of its former self and offering it the opportunity, not just for vengeance, but for _righteous_ vengeance, vengeance in the name of a good cause, surely that's another feather added to a wing that waits in heaven for him? Heaven, naturally, being one place the real Chase will never see the first pearly glimmer of, if all is well and balanced in the afterlife…

But still, we have to call him Chase, for now. It's hard enough for him to drag himself down from the (minor and perfectly controlled) moment of fuzzy warmth that came along with hearing he never really lost his biggest fan. Let's not make it any more difficult.

He steps out of the den, locking the door behind him. There's a vague sort of plan in his mind, that he should wander as far from the real red door as possible, maybe get intentionally lost, fall down through some trick trapdoor in a perfectly ordinary floor. Make a buffoon of himself, basically. Be non-threatening. Be as far from Agent Quinn and its pantomime wetwork mission as possible.

Chance would be a fine thing, though; just as he turns in one direction, he hears the bellowing coming from another, " _How in hell did this happen?!_ _Where did they go?_ " Floors away and still perfectly clear, these questions are repeated several times in several different languages and, from what this Chase can translate, the language gets more choice each time. These are _biblical_ curses, Old Testament fury waiting to strike down any sacrificial lamb that might be presented. Woe betide whoever it is that has so inflamed Panty's wrath.

The echoes of the first blast have scarcely faded when another howl chases them. This time simply, " _McKinney!_ "

And Chase – because we must after all keep calling him Chase, not least because now he might be in genuine physical danger and it's easier for us to think of that applying to Chase – swallows down a dry mouth, and sings back sweet and unheard, "Coming!"


	55. Chapter 55

"What's all the ruckus, chief?" McKinney has a way of swinging from step to step that puts Pantalone very much in mind of a Scaramouche he once had working under him. That gentleman is dead now. Not because of his walk – he went on a job in China and couldn't cut it, and hence he is no more – but the comparison holds. "Heard you yelling somebody was gone. Haven't misplaced already that cute little… daughter? Son? Somebody has to help me out on this one, I can't keep asking."

"Quinn is in the capable hands of my dear, _loyal_ Collie."

"Capable and very _large_ hands." Chase holds his own out to either side, visualizing Columbina's as he looks at them. Not much difference in the sizes really. He's about to mention this when he catches Pantalone glaring and thinks better of it. Flawed though his instincts might be when he comes to not pushing people too far, and though it's a flaw he likes to think can be pretty charming actually, this doesn't seem to be the time. Clearing his throat, "I only mean if she wanted to hold onto somebody, she probably wouldn't have too much difficulty. But then I'm confused; who have you lost?"

Panty is sitting on the same plastic lounger Cap occupied earlier. He has clearly had to choose his position very carefully; every time he leans even a half inch, even just to point at the monitor screen in front of him, the whole bed threatens to flip. This, however, is not the reason only his eyes move, flickering around in his skull to follow McKinney, to watch him come close and lean over from behind the monitor, head upside down as he studies the various camera feeds. He makes a note to himself, he must find out what that wig is on with. It's a good job; hasn't moved once and the hairline is perfect.

Just because he'd like ripping it off this two-faced son of a bitch's scalp to be no more than the beginning of a prolonged campaign of painful punishment doesn't mean Panty can't appreciate, even respect, a consummate performance.

"Wait…" Just starting to roll his eyes, Panty stops. Stops and really listens. Stops long enough to hear, under McKinney's breath, "Oh no, _no_ ," and another "Wait," and to hear that the sleazy twang of his voice has faded back, closer to Merritt's smoothed-out growl.

When Chase's voice is forced on again it is high and tight. "We are minus one smug little shit and one too-prickly-for-her-own-good redhead. But I thought you said nobody _ever_ gets out of them rooms?"

"Nobody ever does. Door doesn't open from inside."

Our ersatz-Chase has to dig deep for the courage to bawl, all righteous indignation, "Well, what'd you go and let them out for?" Pantalone flares. At least he doesn't strike out right away. Confused enough, enough doubts scratching at the back of his mind, that he might even be trying to believe. Still, the rage is in him and he heaves for every breath. In the face of that, it's Purple-Heart time, Medal-of-Honor time, to pretend to be just as angry.

"How could you let this happen? I had as much riding on this as you did!"

"Well, where were _you_?!"

In an act of desperation, Chase throws himself off the monitors, banging on the door as if somebody might answer. When that doesn't work, he studies the keypad on the wall, muttering about fuses and short circuits.

"Wait!" he cries finally and turns around laughing. "Panty, oh, old-buddy-old-pal, they're _hiding_!"

The big head swinging, "Where? Where in those rooms, that both of them can fit and we see nothing?"

"Duh!" and Chase rushes up, knocking with his knuckles at Panty's temple, "In the boxes? Those trick coffins? The ones they woke up in?"

His rapping fist is snatched away, turned so far in such an iron grip that he begins to mumble little 'ow's, to question this course of action. Because yes, the idea is to keep Panty as riled as possible, to keep him blind, but it all sort of falls apart if he gets murdered before the door is ever opened. Panty leans in and, through teeth that have been ground down crooked over the course of years, hisses, "Bunny."

"Excuse me?"

"The rabbit's gone too. Wouldn't fit in one of those coffins alongside one of them, not even Reeves."

Glaring, "Well, who else has the combination, clown?"

Panty throws away the straining wrist, throwing most of McKinney with it. While he staggers a step or two, Panty approaches the door. He stands looking into it, leaning on the opposite wall, arms folded. He'd notice in a moment that he's standing just as Reeves and Atlas did when confronted with the first false door, if he could see himself. He'd laugh. But he can't see himself and anyway, this is something which really does puzzle him.

Because there isn't a doubt in his mind that the lying slime standing next to him is responsible for the loss of his all-important captives. But the locked door makes it difficult. The list of people with the combination is undeniably short. "Myself, Miss Columbina, and El Capitan."

"Nah, Cap definitely locked it again so-"

And maybe the interloper was expecting a reaction, but not the swift and utterly precise swing of Pantalone's straightened arm, the hand that grabs his throat before the last word is even complete. The impact of being barrelled back flat against the wall forces the last syllable out of him in a sick quack.

"Say that again," Panty mutters and it matters very little to him that the man is physically incapable of saying a word. He relents and incrementally loosens his grip only when he sees the focus start to go behind the wide, panicking eyes.

"Cap opened the door," he gasps on his first full breath. "Let me in. Down through the bars. They were under us. Hours and hours ago, not important. He locked it again."

"But you watched him open it, didn't you?" McKinney tries to shake his head but that's still a little beyond his range of movement, and Pantalone has no desire to give him back that capacity to lie. Done with lies, with subterfuge. He's going to do now what he should have done when his cheap fake rowed up to his door, acting like Panty was as dumb as he was. This is the trouble with these damned Horsemen, see, this is the thing he hates the most, is the lack of _professionalism_. They don't do their research, they make it all up as they go. At the time it seemed cute but Panty realizes his error now. He brought that foolish, spray-and-pray attitude into his house. And the trouble with the spray-and-pray type, the hit-it-and-hope types, is that if you keep them around long enough they are almost certain to do their damage sooner or later.

So his other hand, though his eyes never stop burning into McKinney – he's struggling again, finding that the breaths he is allowed are too shallow to really do him any good – Pantalone's other hand reaches out and dials in the code.

His grip shifts, winding in his spluttering victim along the length of his arm like a dance partner, until his throat is held just as securely in the crook of his elbow. With the one breath he managed to catch between positions, McKinney chokes, "Not funny."

"Yeah, well, you don't look all that magic right now either."

He throws back the door, readies himself to throw McKinney inside.

But at Pantalone's first step forward, a crowbar cuts the air whistling, just at the level of his shins. It seems, at first, to come from nowhere. But when it collides, the crack of it against bone echoing in the brutal cell, he falls. Letting go of McKinney in his shock, he hits his knees and turns so his elbow will save him diving straight to the concrete.

Reeves is already on her feet by then. Her boot comes down on the back of Pantalone's neck, forcing him flat. On the next step she is halfway out the door. Atlas is there already, hand held out to her. He's rolling the strain of sudden effort out of his shoulder, crowbar hanging down in an extension of his arm.

Panty gets it. He gets it as he's watching the little cotton-ball tail of the rabbit bounce up and down, the first one to make good its escape.

They hid, alright. McKinney dangled that one right in front of him. But they didn't burrow away somewhere or curl up in those spaces in the walls where tunnels link the rooms. They stood flat and still right up by the door. Under the camera, out of the sightlines.

He gets it and curses them in a half-dozen languages before Merritt levels Columbina's gun at him. First tap of the trigger he sees the little flag and almost laughs.

Second and he lows like a bull. It's a noise Merritt is damn quick to slam the door on.

The bellowing chases them into the hallway. Chases and, like any pursuer, expects them to run, wants them to run and frankly each of them would be inclined to agree. Too much noise and action all at once, it's bound to attract attention. They're on a timer now.

But we can call him Merritt now, see? Our interchangeable McKinney, it doesn't matter what we call him anymore because he won't even hear it, but we can call him the name he deserves. He's folded double, waiting for the spots to stop bursting red and black over his vision. Starting to get worried now that they haven't. Henley is next to him, her arm over his shoulder as he clutches his throat, and he sees her in the blurring orange of a half-developed photograph disappearing in sudden light.

But past the bleeding colours, past the half-baked fear, he sees her beginning to smile. Unbearable, that smile; no matter when you see it, it always knows more than you. For instance, right now, that smile knows why it exists and Merritt doesn't.

Breathless and disbelieving, spitting the ugly F-word, "What's _funny_?"

"I'm sorry, " but she doesn't sound it. "I just can't take you seriously with hair."

His vision clears with his first clear thought; she starts to pull at his wig and he stops her. For one, it's glued on too thoroughly for her to just go tugging it off. She'll leave nothing behind but skull. For another, "Leave it. Chase might get you out of trouble where I can't. Good to see you, by the way, Miss Mystery. May I just congratulate you on your vanishing act of last summer..."

Danny cuts in, "Later," and Merritt is briefly choked again, Danny tugging him up by his own collar. He winces as it pulls against his ripening bruises. "What way do we go?"

Grudgingly, Merritt admits to himself this is a little more important than where Henley was hiding herself up until now, though there was a great line just waiting about how somebody has to be almost murdered before they even hear from her anymore. He points off the way he came and lets them get ahead. This last is only so they won't see how tentative his first step is; his knees seemed to vanish when that huge dirty glove first closed on his throat.

He is spared, or at least given a few extra seconds, by a whistle from the other end of the hall.

Quinn, still barefoot, still in its blurred, colourless face, hangs on the corner of a darker, narrower stairwell. As close as it gets to a gag is a quick and imperfect impersonation, "Come with me if you want to live."

Remembering its photograph, Henley calls it, "Friendly."

"That I am, now come on. If you go that way you're going to walk headlong into Valerie. Which, trust me, will hurt you more than him."

But despite the comforting epithet they know it by, despite the fact that Merritt starts immediately to do what it asks, Danny and Henley linger. Both thinking the same thing; they can't hear anybody coming, the way they were already headed. Both thinking they trusted Merritt's original instructions, given how much time he's had to learn his way around this building. Both thinking of every other white-faced freak they've met so far.

Merritt turns back enough to call them on. All exasperated, all belief. But Quinn is more used to defending itself. It hops up straight and sticks its hands in the air, turning slowly around to show no hidden weapons. "I'm good," it says. "I promise. Good clown. Barely even a clown anymore, actually, they took my colours. I've been defrocked. Stripped of my rank. I'm a vengeful renegade ronin." All the way around to face them again, "Helping you is the best prank I can pull right now."

"Well, when you put it like that…" and Henley changes her direction. She has to go back after a step or two and grab Danny along with her. "Ignore him. He's still getting over the fact that clowns are, as he keeps putting it, 'a thing'."

Voice dropped to a hush, already disappearing round a corner on the stairwell. "Oh, we're a thing, alright. I just ain't entirely sure what the thing is anymore. Half of us seem to have joined some sort of weirdo murder club and not told the other half. Which is terrifically rude, on top of everything else it is." A little gabbling commentary, barely audible at times, but enough to follow. The clown moves so fast it's not even in sight most of the time and the chatter keeps them from losing track as it scouts ahead.

Merritt, at the head of them, is the only one who tries to maintain contact, calling out soft, "You take care of Dasko?"

"Becky Badclown –" _Oh_ now _her outfits make sense_ , Henley thinks – "Is out of action, likely to remain so for a couple of hours. I found Cap too, but I was only able to lock him in the back kitchen. He'll get out, but he has to go the long way round. I would've had Valerie only him and me both heard Panty start yelling at the same time. You proud of me, ChaseMerritt? Cherritt? _I'm_ proud of me, but that doesn't count. Someone ought to be proud of me."

"It _would_ have been me only you called me Cherritt."

But all of a sudden Danny can't see where their voices are coming from anymore. They're somewhere to his left but there he only sees a wall, dark, unlit, a square landing between flights, no one around. Henley, a step behind, stops on the last stair. Neither of them sees the tread begin very gently to tip. "Where did they g-" but that's as far as she gets – the tread flips suddenly, pitches her off. If Danny wasn't there to catch her she'd be down the next set of stairs sideways. Broken bones.

"I hate this," he mutters. Henley calls out as loudly as she dares for Merritt, but Danny grabs her back. "No, wait. I don't trust that clown."

"What choice have we got?"

" _None_ ," and Merritt's head appears through the wall next to them. It's only on second glance that they see his hands, grabbing the split apart like a curtain. The seemingly solid wood panels stretch away from each other. Released they'll return to the perfect imitation. And by the time Danny and Henley have caught up with all this, they are halfway through it, being dragged through. "Choice is keep up or stand here and get locked back in."

"Hang _on_ a second," and Danny might just be asking for the time to free his foot from the split in the curtain, to get used to the change in the light, or just to the idea of walking through walls. Might be, but probably isn't. Henley might be able to breathe deep, to placate, but Merritt can't. Not after the time he's spent here already, not in the circumstances. This is not the time for Atlas to be proving his worth. Quite apart from everything else, if he puts his foot down he's likely to activate some trapdoor in the floor.

Before Danny is even square on both feet again, Merritt has him by the lapel. Hissing in, ready to start, "Listen here, pal, this has been too long a night for you to start arguing at dawn. All this has been done to get you out of here but I'm half inclined to leave you behind just at this moment, so-"

"I'm just saying take a second to think. Who are you even following?"

No one, currently. They're all stopped, stalled out in the beginning of an argument that won't have any winners and can only go one way. But the person they _were_ following has doubled back. Quinn comes charging down the hallway towards them, cutting Merritt off before he can struggle to defend it, "He's right. Let's all take a second."


	56. Chapter 56

Say what you like about danger, call it all the names you want and list out all the terrible things it is capable of doing to the thought processes of an otherwise sensible person. But it does have a way of cutting through distractions. Pride, overthinking, longstanding tensions, they tend to vanish when you discover that someone bigger and meaner than you is about to turn the corner.

Danny is the prime example. Not a moment ago he wanted to know why he should ever trust Quinn, right? He was willing to stand his ground. In the midst of what was already a very dangerous, time-sensitive situation, he was willing to stand firm until his point was made.

But the second he saw it come crashing back around the corner, and now it is fumbling a ring of keys out of its pocket, a believer was made of him. Quinn gets one of the closer doors open, stands holding it for them, and with his convert's conviction Danny drops any and all questions and concentrates on putting Merritt and Henley in front of him.

It's only after he has followed them inside that he realizes there's nothing in the room, and no other exit. He spins on his heel to find Quinn pulling the door shut behind them. In a second he has fistfuls of its plaid shirt.

The second after that, it has hold of his wrists.

Thumbs pushing in hard underneath, some sweet spot between veins, "If I could just _explain_ ," it grimaces, and with the slightest extra pressure his hands seize open and he falls away hissing. "Thank you. Valerie's coming. He's checking doors so we can't stay here. But it's alright."

There's something very calm about its voice. Merritt's never heard it before. Considering some of the situations he has briefly shared with Quinn, he doesn't like it. He doesn't like the deep breaths every other word, the ticking pulse in the side of its neck. As they watch, can only look on, it takes a pancake of make-up out of a pocket in its shorts and smears the palms of its hands with thick, chalky white.

"It's alright. Because the last time me and Valerie crossed, I sort of hooked him up to a light fixture."

Henley, her mouth dropping a little open, "You did what?"

"Not electrically. Point is, it's me he wants. Which is fine. It's alright."

"No," and Merritt tries to take hold of its arm, to keep it here, but it lifts up its elbow to fend him off.

"It's _alright._ It's fine. Now, there's a door across the hall. It's never locked, and it has big white marks all over it. Well, it will do soon. So you can't miss it. The bookcase in the back turns and there's another stairwell. Straight down, it'll bring you out at the front door. Watch out for the Captain. Take Collie's boat-" Tutting and sighing, getting white make-up everywhere, it pinches another pocket open with just its fingertips and holds it out to Merritt. "The key, the key I got out of her hair before, go ahead."

He hesitates too long. Danny steps up and snatches the key himself.

The clown sneers, "Thank you. You should know, though, you're the only Horseman who's never been anybody's favourite. Wait until you hear the word 'favourite' again, that'll mean I've got Val turned around."

By the time this last is spoken, it's already out of the room again. Nobody could quite say when the door opened or how it slipped away but it's gone, with Merritt grabbing at it again, before Danny slams it out. "I think this is the most helpful thing it can do," he says. Then, under the burning glare that follows, "They were in Rome that night. That one and another, _under the stage_. You know what that means. I saw them being _arrested_ , now, I don't know what the _charge_ was, but-"

"Atlas, answer me this; who was under that stage after the show and _didn't_ get arrested?"

Jack. One fact and the rest should fall into place. The rest does, actually, but it's too late by then. They could have learned all the truths at the heart of the universe and it wouldn't matter, not to Quinn. Henley has her ear pressed to the door, listening to its latest solo act. Calling out, "McKinney? McKinney, you goon, you said you'd get me out of here!" A groan of frustration, a series of hard thumps like punches; leaving big white handprints on the other door. And the noise brings Valerie. The weight, the rolling tip-toe steps, you only need to hear him to visualize all too perfectly what a monster of Valerie's stature looks like when he's trying to step lightly. He comes like a dancing bear and Quinn pretends not to notice. "I swear to God, if I find you, I will rip that fakey wig off your head so ha… Oh. Hi, Val. You… Come on, you're not still sore at little old _mwah_ , right? It was a _gag_. And you looked real cute flopping around like a carp!" This trails out in something like a scream, into hissed curses and running steps that pass close by the door that hides the Horsemen. Barrelling like a football player through the false wall, bawling to that echoing stairwell, "McKinney, if I ever lay eyes on you again I'll make sure you ain't nobody's favourite ever!"

By the time Danny mumbles something about their cue, Merritt is already halfway across the hall, and Henley has the white-stained door open.

The rest is as Quinn said; when the bookcase turns Merritt makes sure he runs an eye over Danny. Was he expecting a lie? A trap? Because if he wasn't, Merritt doesn't think there's much excuse for his behaviour. But that's something to be discussed later, with the calm of freedom and the perspective of hindsight and a very stiff drink.

They fall after each other down the narrow spiral of the secret stairwell. Escape starts to feel real, unobserved, feeling the air get cooler as they get closer to the damp ground floor. Nothing but their own footsteps and the echoes given back, when you're alone and you'd know if anybody came after you, release becomes a tangible thing, and tantalisingly near.

The stairs empty out through another turning panel – this one a niche with a statue that, in any other part of Italy, would be a barely draped nymph holding a branch or a torch, something of the kind. In this house, she is as you'd expect from the neck down, and above that is grinning from under a rainbow wig, holding a fully-functional airhorn. None of the escaping Horsemen notices this, of course. They notice the huge, iron bound slab of the front door hanging open over the hallway tiles, letting in the milky pastel light of the most incredibly beautiful dawn any of them has seen in a while.

There are only three boats tethered outside. But there could be a hundred and you'd know Columbina's; it is the same electric blue as her lipstick.

Merritt is ahead, and Danny throws the key to him. Henley is still a step inside; trying to shut the door behind them, to cover their tracks, she is pushing it to get the great weight moving. Danny drops back, taking hold of the enormous hoop handle. That's one hand. The other reaches out for hers, bringing her to him. They'll pull together from out here. Seeing the door start to shut with her still on the other side stopped his heart.

The tips of her fingertips glance his palm – and then they vanish.

Henley disappears, dragged back into the shadows inside with a strangled cry. Danny yells out for her, puts his shoulder to the door to throw it wide again.

When he sees her again, the first thing he sees is the umbrella handle hooked around her throat. The Captain, being a squat toad of a creature and shorter than she is, becomes clear only after Danny is sure she is still breathing past it.

Breathing and shouting to him, "Just go!"

"Let her go," he says, but with his first step closer, something flashes silver in the Captain's hand. No need for better light to recognize a blade. He grins and a tooth flashes gold.

"Steady there, now. Honestly… You young ones these days – no manners. Leaving without a word to your hosts. What about gratitude, hm? What about our hospitality?" But the words seeping out of him seem a quiet afterthought. All of the Captain's attention is on a strand of Henley's hair, hooked over the tip of the knife and held out long to be sniffed.

"Danny," Henley snaps. Then, through gritted teeth as the handle is tugged tighter, "Run now, fight later."

He nods. He'd say the same thing if they were the other way round. In fact, if they were the other way round Henley would be gone by now. She wouldn't have stuck around long enough to even speak, and Danny would have been proud of her. Would have felt safe too, knowing he wouldn't be alone for long, that she'd be back as fast as she possibly could and with as much or as little cavalry as would follow. Run now, fight later. Fight from a position of freedom and with the best force you can gather. It is exactly what he should do.

Which is exactly why he is stuck doing nothing, between knowing the truth of that and another truth which is simply this; he's not wired to leave her behind. Just the thought of it and Danny can't act at all.

At the corner of his eye, a flash of blue tells him that, however Merritt and Quinn might have thought they dealt with her, Collie is up and around. Stumbling, drifting, but she's part of this. They converge on him, her and the Captain.

Then there's a hand at the back of his collar, Merritt dragging him outside. "Listen to the woman," he growls, not knowing that Danny did that long since and wholly agreed with what he heard. "Run now, fight later."

Danny couldn't say if he steps into the boat or is pulled in clean off his feet. He's still looking back at the door when the key turns in the ignition.

But there's no roar. No engine noise. Not even the wheezy smoker's cough of an engine trying to turn over and failing. Merritt mutters, curses. He turns the key over and over and nothing. Nothing, that is, except for a faint but distinct ticking. It's been there since the key first went in but it creeps up on both of them as they run out of other possibilities.

Collie, looking sleepy and warm, has eased herself to the door. She hangs on it, hand over hand, her head swinging down low and almost-upside down. "Oh, you boys didn't try to start her up, did you?" Giggling, the first bubbling beginnings of a dark cackle, "Hey Cap! They stuck the key in my boat!" A rich, rounded old bark, Henley yelling at how close he is to her ear. "Oh, my darling sugar-lumps," Collie purrs, "You oughn't've done _that_."

"Out," Danny says. Under his breath at first, then louder just to drown out the terror of the ticking, "Out, come on," and he grabs Merritt's arm to pull him back onto stone. They part there, both diving for the cover of separate pillars either side of the door.

The ticking gets louder, faster, rises to frenzy.

Then, with a pop, a cloud of confetti explodes all over the little craft. Sparklers are lit. A few small fireworks shoot off colours at either end.

That's it. Nothing more cataclysmic than that.

But it's too late; the trick is played. Collie might still be swaying but when her taloned hands close on Merritt, when she drags him close so she can bear-hug him back inside, there's no resisting her improbable strength. Danny has those extra moments but what can he do? What could anybody do when glitter and spangles are raining down on a murky, garbage-strewn canal in Venice? When Cap has Henley, and Collie Merritt, what can he do?

For the record, he really is on the verge of coming up with something. It shimmers at the edges of his consciousness, just needing a little concentration.

A little concentration and he doesn't hear the dancing-bear steps creeping up on him. The first he knows of Valerie is the floor disappearing from underneath him, an iron arm picking him up around his middle. For a horrible second he is almost inverted over Valerie's shoulder. On the floor beneath him, being dragged from the other black-gloved hand, a tied-off sack thrashes around on the floor screaming, "I hate all of you! I hate clowns, I hate Horsemen, I'ma go live on a goddamn _island_!"


	57. Chapter 57

Pantalone will be expecting Petey to report back. That gives the wary rescue party an important inroad. Petey gets in, he opens a side door at the first opportunity. That leaves an entry point for Dylan, and for Doc. It's sad, but the clown is both a necessary navigator and the only hope of getting the damned red door open. He is also well-known and the obligation to stick together means any hope at stealth is shot before it ever flew. That two of three doors can only be approached by water is just a nail in the coffin. This is where Jack comes in; once Doc and Dylan are inside it's up to him and Petey to open an alternative route out. Lula, for her part, and it's a part which has been deliberately kept minimal since she's been through so much already, will be waiting with another boat, so that all the doors are covered.

There are a number of reasons they waited for morning. The need for rest and recovery was barely a concern. Nobody rested anyway. A little more consideration was given to the cover provided by daytime traffic.

But primarily it was done because Doc said so. Attack, he said, would have been expected last night. Would have been waited and watched for. With Pantalone and those loyal to him on such high alert, it would have been decidedly unwise to get within a mile of the place. Wiser to wait. Wait, let them expect, let them be prepped. Let them stay up all night on edge and wondering. "Trust me," he said. "Your Horsemen aren't going anywhere."

Right now, it all still seems like a good idea. All still seems to be going well. But knowing what you know about what already happened while the sun came up over Venice, how well do you see this going?

There's only one thing still bothering Dylan. He's tried to ignore it. For the sake of a working relationship with Doc, he really did want to. When it became clear to him that he couldn't do that, he moved on and has spent most of the last hour trying to phrase it so as he doesn't start some sort of war. He looks up now, breathing in. It's a pretty good performance suggesting this has only just occurred to him.

And nobody ever sees or appreciates it because five minutes ago, Petey was sent looking for Jack and Lula. You can give the performance of a lifetime but a few bars of _Kiss From A Rose_ on a kazoo and you're always runner-up.

"Aw, come on!"

"Yeah, not cool, man."

Their voices chase Petey out a door under the gallery. One hand shoving the kazoo into his back pocket, the other moving for Doc to read. "He says he's sorry… Quinn is the one with the timing and… And I'm ashamed to say here's a sign I don't recognize but from context I'd guess something like sensitivity?" As Petey comes skulking, he bends his knees slightly, lowering himself to where Doc can pat his head as he passes. "You got confused, didn't you, son? Quinn should have snatched that kazoo away as you drew breath."

More signing, nothing Dylan can catch.

Doc answers, "Soon."

Not an answer Dylan trusts, an ominous sort of an answer, an answer that points to several questions which could be pretty horrible. He doesn't like this silent communication they've got. Maybe Petey has no choice but it leaves him feeling cut out, paranoid, always wondering what they say about him in a language he doesn't speak. It's the same problem he's always had with clowns; their world is their own, and all the doors are locked.

Then, as he comes out from the back, Jack wants to know, "What's going on, are we _going_ now?" and Dylan thinks, _Oh, okay_. That was more than likely the question. Pretty obvious question too. A less intelligent man would be lulled by that, let false security bully him into being ashamed of the conclusions he jumped to.

But he has to admit, just this once, he jumped the gun.

The echo of Doc, "Soon. There's just one thing I want to clear up first."

"Something that can't wait?" The fear in Lula's voice is understandable. She sees the potential war faster even than Dylan did, the sword about to fall. But it's okay. She shouldn't worry so much. He's been phrasing.

"Shouldn't take but a minute," he says, "If I get an honest answer." Doc squares his shoulders. That mild half-smile can still make Dylan's palm sweat, but they've been sweating all night. Fear has a shelf-life; hold on to it too long, and it goes off. "This must have all happened right in front of your eyes. How'd you miss it?"

As hesitant and disappointing as only an honest answer can be, "I don't know."

"Not buying."

"I _don't_ know."

Petey knows. Dylan can tell because he raises his hand like a kid in class and, just like a kid, waits with a slightly nervous look on his face to be asked. Doc follows Dylan's eyes and it's him who asks for the answer to be mumbled up from the back row, him who reads it aloud. "Easy for Dad to trick us. If Dad gives an order we don't check with Mom. Just do it. Is Mom and Dad, is a pair, both the same, one is the other. Easy for Dad to…" The furrow of his brow, squinting, he waits for a combination to finish and be repeated slower, "To go behind Mom's back."

"Right hand," Jack says, half-sighing, and Dylan shuts his eyes because he knew it was coming, "didn't know what the left was doing."

Petey points, his other index finger at his nose – _Nailed it_. Doc, hearing the undertones, is more coy; "Well put, young man."

Old automatic defences rear up. There's probably no way of saving this now, but if you think that's going to keep Dylan from trying, you're mistaken.

No, what keeps him from trying is an email alert, the vibration of his phone. An unknown sender but one of those randomly generated addresses, all numbers and scattered Qs, Ys, Zs, the kind that deletes itself after an hour. He knows who wants him. But he assesses this in a half-second, less than a glance. No one watching sees him distracted in any way or, if they do, they just assume the little flicker of indecision was the moment when he swallowed his pride.

"Fine," he mutters. You might argue that this performance is better than his last, but he's cheating; the bitter taste in his mouth is real. "We're done. Ready, I mean. One last double-check and then we'll go take back what's ours."

He leaves the room before anybody can ask what it is he has to double-check. The last he hears from them is Doc's easy murmur, "Isn't he rather highly strung, for a leader?"

"No." Lula sounds frank and impartial. "Anything happens to him we get Atlas. So Dylan's fine, thanks."

Unable to decide if that's a compliment or not, Dylan forgets it. Concentrates on the message only to find it is just as simple and just as double-edged. _Unblock me now_ , it says, _We need to talk_.

Terrifying, really, how even her voice in his head can turn so cold and urgent, can make him snap to attention like he's just been caught cutting class. Terrifying too that even under those circumstances, even under the hum of every nerve wondering what could be so important all the rules need to be broken, it's still a relief to find himself dialling Alma's number again.

She answers with only her name and all the clipped efficiency of her profession. "It's me. What's the matter?" but all he gets in reply is _oui_ and _attends_ and _mm-hmm._ "You can't talk. Is it you, are you in trouble?"

" _Non, bien sur que non._ _Rien de ce genre."_

Through gritted teeth – how many times can somebody need told? – "Then forget it. Whatever it is, it's not worth the risk. I'll get by, Alma, and it'll be a lot easier if I'm not worrying about what it could be costing you so-"

On the far end of the line, he hears a door close and realizes his mistake; she was just excusing herself, finding some more amenable spot to speak to him. When she speaks again, it's with a different voice; more open, and more than a little irritated. "I'm in Rome," she says.

"I'm not."

Sighing, "Thank God."

He can practically feel her relax. Sympathy softens him; he felt the same just hearing her voice. "Come on," coaxing, trying to smile and make it sound easy, "Even if I was, you don't think I'd notice a swarm of Interpol agents suddenly descending on the city?"

"I just didn't know if you'd leave him. If you'd be able to to."

"Who, McKinney? Let's just say I'm not overly concerned. Just out of interest, did you speak to him?"

"Mmh. You might want to consider giving the others some sort of training on what to do if they're arrested…"

From that moment on, Dylan doesn't trust himself to speak. One hand over his mouth so she won't hear the electric stress of him trying not to laugh, he listens intently to every unimpressed syllable. Her disdain swells like opera, like all of the orchestra striving at once. She couldn't possibly know what she's doing, that this is the one thing he needed above all else today. Before he goes to face whatever danger in the last building in the world he ever wanted to set foot in, seeing it belongs to _them_ , he needed this.

Without the slightest glimmer of respect or human compassion to the prisoner, Alma tells him how utterly incomprehensible a game McKinney is playing. To hand himself in willingly like that? To give up and promise to tell all? She disagrees with that to begin with. And when she moves on to telling Dylan how this supposed-Merritt then put on a grand act of _waking up_ and began insisting they had the wrong twin, that he'd been swapped out, forced under hypnosis to shave his head and framed… well, by then Alma is downright disgusted.

"Ridiculous," she spits. "He forgets his brother is on _parole_. There's no record of him leaving the U.S. Even if he _had_ managed to get on a plane, there would have been police waiting for him on the runway."

Bless her naïve heart; she still believes in computerised systems and no-fly lists. As if Dylan wasn't on a list or two himself.

 _I love you so much right now_ , but he stops himself at the edge of those words. The smile that goes with them still on his face, he decides there is time to pursue another hunch. Something that's been bugging him, quiet but insistent, since he first figured out what Danny and Merritt had tried to pull. "Why haven't they fingerprinted him yet? Surely that would settle everything."

Does she fumble? It's very slight if she does, but does she? The quick little mutter of her answer – he catches every other word, 'backlog', 'file transfer', 'not secure' – is familiar to him. It's what Dylan does when he's fumbling. When an answer isn't true and he wants it to sound unimportant, so that no one will listen. "So they were sending a hard copy by courier but the guy never showed up and we don't know what happened so until they've looked into it… Stop that. Stop nodding, I can hear you nodding."

"What?" he says, "I'm agreeing with you."

"You nod when you don't believe me."

"Only if I'm going to let it slide." A pause, or almost one – it's too full of his smile and her quick-bitten tongue to really be silent. "So when did you get moved from Monte Carlo?"

Too fast, "As soon as we were informed of the arrest."

"That was before you called me to tell me you were on your way to Monte Carlo."

"It took a while for the order to come down. You know how it is."

"I know exactly how it is. How did you like it?"

"Like what?"

"Being in on the trick."

Alma falls quiet. It tells him everything he needs to know long before he hears the grudging smile overrule her doubts, her uneasy, "Why?"

"Wave one last wand for me before you retire."


	58. Chapter 58

When the phone call ends, and Dylan steps out of the side room, he sees the rest of the would-be rescue party gathered at the main door. He assumes they're waiting for him.

It's one thing you would think he might have learned not to do, lately. Assume, that is.

They're not waiting for him. There'd be a lot more engine noise, lapping water, impatient revving, if all they were waiting for was _him_. The likelihood of them waiting at all is minimal. Not that they would have gone without him, just that Petey would very likely have come and dragged him along by the throat if he'd been tied down here a second longer than he felt was necessary. These clowns – with the notable and extreme except of Doc and Pantalone – have a devotion to their partners Dylan has only ever seen before in law enforcement, and even then rarely so powerful or pronounced.

In fact, it's Petey who gives the game away. He peels off from the cluster at the edge of the canal and paces inside. Right in front of Dylan, not ten feet between them, but Petey doesn't see. Doesn't see much, in Dylan's opinion, past the end of his own nose. The kind of anger that usually demands to be voiced tightens every muscle in his face to a fierce furrow and, if you can take your fearful eyes from that or if you have to look away, you see his hands, still one gloved and one bare, rolling in and out of painful fists.

Dylan knows better than to ask if something's wrong. He passes Doc, hanging where the door hides him, just as Lula darts in after Petey, shoulders his way past Jack.

Seeing what they see, "My God," he mutters, but Doc is inclined to differ.

" _That_ gentleman," he says, "had no hand in this."

Dylan knows Rebecca Dasko only from photographs. All the ones he's got must be a little out of date, though; there are some pretty sizeable differences between those and what he's seeing now. 'Sizeable' isn't a pun, by the way. He tells himself that very quickly and with a powerful sense of backpedalling. He didn't mean anything by 'sizeable', except that the differences are pretty large. 'Large' isn't a jab either. Seriously, it isn't – what need has he for sarcasm or Freudian slips when all it takes a simple statement of the very obvious to say, Dasko only has the one chin, in the photographs he's seen. She's generally wearing nothing so deliberate or provocative as the Halloween-obvious Hepburn she's sporting now, a pristine act of exaggeration down to the straining tightness of her black opera gloves, the ridiculous scale of her unnecessary sunglasses.

There isn't a single photograph in which she is holding tight to a gold chain dog-leash.

It takes a very deep breath before Dylan can steady his hands enough to trust that his voice won't shake, before he can turn towards Doc – towards, but not facing, eye contact is a ways away yet – "I need you to go inside and make sure your man can be trusted to keep his head."

"Petey's a pacifist."

"Didn't look that way."

Doc's eyes travel down the length of the gold leash. Dylan knows this because his own do the same and he feels both their heads turn in sync. When Doc's get to the end, he goes inside to speak to Petey. Only Dylan and Jack are left staring at Quinn. Slumped in the front of the boat, it jolts up straight at a tug of the chain, dragged by the diamond-studded collar around its neck. And though it is putting up a hell of a fight, heaving with sighs and shrugs and groans of farce-boredom, Dylan is having a hard time controlling his own reactions. Over a clown. That's the only reason he's worried about Petey, and he hopes the big guy would take it as a compliment.

"Does this mean -?" Jack breathes. He stops because there's no way he can phrase the question that doesn't kill him. Dylan knows what he wants to ask. He could save him, if it weren't that he doesn't want to think about it either. "What does this mean happened back at that other place?"

Stepping out to greet the envoy – Dylan's learned his lesson about not listening to messengers – "Nothing good."

The boat is close now. A noise like a foghorn startles them both. Neither of them realizes it came from Quinn until it follows up, "Advance warning: this Golightly bit she's clinging to _sucks_."

Rebecca's black patent stiletto flashes out, angled so the heel will bite on the kick. By then she is getting ready to stand, tugging straight what little skirt she's got. She holds out a hand as the boat eases to a stop, palm down, limp at the wrist. Her meaning is obvious; she expects to be helped up onto the step. It's a very simple universal cue and it costs Dylan nothing to take it. He doesn't think twice. Not until, low and mocking, he hears Quinn singing to its apparent mistress, " _He ain't even scared of you_."

 _Oh_ , he thinks, _okay._ _She's_ not _on her way to a costume party_. And he ought to be able to do what the collared captive is doing and laugh at her for it, this wannabe, this non-event, this so-called clown who can't even creep out a known coulrophobe. He didn't even know what she was meant to be.

But now that he's been made aware, the best he can probably do is take his hand back before it starts to sweat.

Easier said than done, though; both of Rebecca's are clam-shelled tight around it. The effort that goes into her act is visible. It has a stench all its own, which is very similar to the smell of desperation. She's giving off sparks with it and still, it can't disguise the vicious glimmer in her eyes. The tone fake, the excitement real, she rattles spitfire syllables at him, trying so hard to be sweet she drips saccharine slime. "This is a wonderful day for me. You know, you're my very last? Let's see, I got my Daniel first, then it was Miss May and, very briefly, you, Mr Wilder – I have that dry-cleaning bill, by the way, for the coffee you threw over me? Then Merritt and I had our little chat in Rome and my darling old _pal_ Miss Reeves in Monte Carlo. So you see you're last. I've got my full house, I always said I would and now I have. Or is it a stable?"

For a moment, Dylan only stares at her.

Then, remembering the best advice he was ever given and has repeatedly given himself as regards dealing with clowns, he rolls his eyes. He leans out around her and, decidedly unimpressed, tells Quinn, "You were right about the Golightly bit."

"Lula's going to flip," Jack sighs. He's picked up the vibe, the plan being to find Becky as boring as humanly possible, and wanders inside with all the urgency of a cloud making its way across the sky. "She loves that stupid movie."

Rebecca doesn't just give Dylan's hand back, she throws it at him. He turns away just as soon as she does, mumbling from the doorway. "Come on, and we'll get this over with."

She follows flouncing, every breath a little huff of rage. The only flash of anything close to guilt Dylan feels is when Quinn, yanked out of the boat by the chain, yelps, scrambles. But it too knows the game and doesn't react any more than it has to.

"It _will_ be a wonderful day," and Rebecca says this through gritted teeth, as if warning the fabric of fate that she will grab it and tear it into the required pieces for her day to be wonderful if it doesn't get on board, "Just as soon as I get this stupid mutt trained…"

"Stupid? Mutt I can take, I been called that before, but the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, bitch."

"…What?"

"Oh, _Christ_ , she can't even do a simple Oz reference. Somebody save me!"

Somebody might, but it won't be Dylan. In fact, he misses the whole stilted, unfunny exchange and every thwarted joke within it, misses the rant that follows when Rebecca fails to produce a comeback, distracted by the fact that Doc has disappeared. Nowhere to be seen and there's a reason for that, there is, there must be, and Dylan should be able to figure it out. That's his job, as good a description of it as any – to know why, to look at a hole in the picture and see what goes there. His problem solving skills stall out, however, when he was counting on the guy. Really had hoped Doc would handle this.

But a flash of panic drags him out of that empty-skull moment; at the corner of his eye, he sees Petey approaching Rebecca. He spins but doesn't call out. The guy looks calm enough. His hands move at first, until he sees Rebecca's features crush and crinkle with confusion. She looks just as if she might cry, until Lula groans, " _God_ … He asked if he can pet your dog? How basic is that? I thought the ASL thing was something all you guys did? Petey, didn't you tell me it's for communication, like that it's a field work thing for the spying? And so you can discuss what bits and gags you're going to use without spoiling it for the audience? I thought it was a clown thing? Or aren't you one of them? I just can't think of any other reason for that lipstick."

Quinn cackles, howls until it rocks and then rolls over double, "Oh, Miss May, _thank you_ ; that's the first decent joke I've heard today."

But the last word stretches long; the next pull of the chain is now little tug, but Rebecca's entire arm whipping round, catching the slack on her elbow so it jars tight. Quinn falls like a tree, ninety-degrees from standing straight. The leash is dropped snaking down on its back. Rebecca breezes past Petey, stretching up on her toes to ruffle his hair. "Sure thing, sport."

She fixes both eyes on Dylan. No surprise, really; not being the sharpest she has latched onto the only possible weak link. He could almost be mad at Quinn for tipping her off on the one advantage she has over him. Almost, except that it isn't going to serve her. Rebecca fixates on him but not well enough. She can't ignore Jack and Lula, muttering, shooting little glances at each other.

"Is animal cruelty a gag now?"

"Even if it was, it wouldn't work. I don't buy Quinn as a dog."

"It isn't domestic. Holly had a cat anyway."

"I knew she was going to ruin that movie for you."

"Take a lot more than _her_ to ruin that movie for me."

"Do you think everybody gets it, though? I wouldn't get it if it wasn't for you."

They're not especially cruel or sharp. Dylan's not sure they know how to be. It's a pity; they really could be pushing it a little further. But Dasko flinches at every perceived slight. She should have spoken thirty seconds ago but she stumbles, can't stop listening to them and has to cover her hesitation with some tired, fussy business around the clasp of her clutch purse.

She can't take it. It ought to be obvious, when you think of where she came from, what she used to be. Magicians, even their assistants, are perfectionists. Dylan defies you to find a magician, even amongst the novelty ones, who would rather raise a laugh than a gasp. Laughter is death to most of them.

Out of the clutch she takes a handful of small, black cards. When he reaches out to take one from her, Dylan's palms aren't sweating. This is no clown.

He does the very worst thing he can think of doing to her; tips his head to Jack and Lula, that give-her-a-break grimace, "Guys, come on."

Rebecca has to clear her throat. She swallows so much bile she shudders. The blood shows glowing through the powder on her face. But, eventually, and with gargantuan, energy-draining effort that only further proves she is unsuited to her career-change, she regains control of herself. "Based on your previous form," she manages, as Dylan is opening the first of the little cards, "your counterpart king across the board, which is to say the grand high _vecchi_ -"

Quinn shoves itself just enough out of Petey's arms to bawl, "You're still saying it wrong!"

"- The _only_ leader of the Commedia –"

"It's pronounced 'asshole'."

" – my own Pantalone, he thought you might need-"

It's all the punchline she's got. But Dylan has had more than enough time to read the elegant gold script inside the card as she has heel-clacked around passing more out to Jack and Lula and Petey. Date, time, address, it's very clear what he has in his hand. He steals the words clean from between her lips. "A written invitation."


	59. Chapter 59

Suffice to say, it doesn't take long to get rid of Rebecca Dasko after that. Really it's the smartest thing she's done since day one of this whole strange endeavour, the first time she's played it right and cut her losses at an appropriate moment. It's the same for any entertainer; the second you hear a heckler, you ought to wrap it up if you can. It's not just that your confidence suffers, that it's a rare sort of arrogance that can recover from a fumble like Rebecca's. It's losing your audience. When they can amuse themselves more than you amuse them? There's no coming back from that. Rebecca finished delivering her little invitations – with just about everybody chipping in _some_ suggestion as to how that might have been funnier-done – and she got out of there.

Jack was happy for her. She showed no _other_ sign of any performative prowess whatsoever, but there's something to be said for a well-timed exit.

He's not sure exactly what that _is_ , but something.

Jack, currently, is alone. Rebecca's decision to cut her act short was the _last_ thing that went well. She stormed out, dragging Quinn by the leash. No sooner was the door shut than Doc emerged from where he'd been hidden. Why he hid isn't hard to figure out. Should, actually, be pretty obvious; Rebecca hadn't seen him yet and no one outside this building knows he's even in Venice. Doc is a hole-card, he's up their sleeve. As Jack understood it, that was the point of getting him here to begin with.

Dylan wasn't just so certain, necessitating a lengthy discussion of the circumstances. This was followed by a further lengthy discussion on how Doc could have known about Rebecca's involvement without ever suspecting his own partner, right across the table from him. Jack stepped out during a third about what might be in store at the time and place on the invitations, but there have been more since then. None of them ends with a definitive answer or progress of any kind. In every instance Jack has just used it, the word 'discussion' is a euphemism.

The way the alleys and arches around here echo, Pantalone could have heard half of it.

As far as Jack can tell, there's no point in any of it. The one point to be taken away from this morning's visit is clear and unequivocal. There's nothing to discuss. And right now he's alone with that fact, which only ever seems to get bigger and uglier, and he can't do anything about it. Jack thought he'd struck oil when he stumbled across the catering kitchen balled up snug in the middle of the building. Everything gleaming, everything chrome, everything on that grand industrial scale. To anybody else around, the yard-wide coffee machine would have been too daunting to approach. Picture Dylan boiling water the slow way on one tiny corner of a twelve-burner stove. Picture Lula sitting in front of the monolith for an hour or more, trying to figure it out. She'd be getting there, but she wouldn't have coffee.

Jack does. And, as he said, he thought this was a good thing, this was a ray of light in the midst of some relentlessly dark days.

But maybe he should have let the caffeine go by him, just found some private spot where nobody would find him for at least a couple of hours and gone to sleep. If you need to rub some honour on the excuses, say he'll need his strength for what's ahead. If you'd rather just stay honest, say he's been trying to count back to his last uninterrupted, not-chemically-induced hour and he can't find it. Maybe he should have just gone with that. A little thoughtless empty space sounds great just now.

Because even with a pretty good coffee, he's still all alone in the cavern kitchen, listening to his own breathing and his foot tapping, all alone with the swelling and pustulent idea that drove him here in the first place – _they are in control now_.

However badly she announced it, that's what Rebecca came to tell them. They've got nothing. The remaining free Horsemen have been formally invited to Pantalone's inevitable finale. Reduced, if you want to carry on the metaphor, to ticket-holding members of the audience.

That's what Quinn was for. The official line is, Rebecca wanted a purse-puppy and Pantalone would have given her Bruiser. Quinn argued that Bruiser is Mom's dog, and therefore not his to give. You can guess the rest. But that was story-telling, tall tale made up to be funnier than Rebecca, to leave her behind, to embarrass her. The truth is, what more powerful statement can you make than sending one of your own in chains? A statement not just of how far you're willing to go, but of how little it costs you to go there. You can send a prisoner but the message isn't the same. Had they been shown Danny or Henley in that collar, it would have almost been a comfort. Proof of life, proof of defiance, proof of weakness on Pantalone's part, that he'd feel the need to flaunt his prizes.

Send one of your own and you show yourself ruthless, brutal, impervious. Entirely free of sentiment. You show that you are calling the nastiest of shots.

It feels like church, like interrogation rooms; waiting in silence for the judgement of a wrathful god. You go into a loop – anger to fear to resignation, back to the beginning again. You tap your foot and glare hard at cups of coffee like you're going to throw them, but you never do. You can't. You're not in control. The smallest act of destruction, and it would make you feel so much better, but even that much choice and action is beyond you.

It's a fear phase, the intensity of trying to hold still a tremor in his hands, when Dylan finds him. He tries to cover up what must be written all over his face by turning to start up the coffee machine again. Maybe he stands up fast enough, maybe Dylan's feeling sympathetic, maybe he sees the coffee coming and keeps his mouth shut out of gratitude. One way or another it works. They skip the part where Jack might have broken quicker than any snitch he's ever known, just blurted out desperate, _We can't fix this_.

Thing is, by skipping the urgent, tip-of-the-tongue distress, they're left with very little to go on.

Cheap as any other small talk, Dylan asks, "Where's Lula?"

"She went to find Petey. He took off." As an afterthought, almost drowned out by the mechanical whir in the coffee machine, "He doesn't like confrontation. It panics him."

" _Stop yelling, you're scaring the kids…_ "

"The only thing that needs to stop is this creepy 'kid' business, okay?"

Hands up in surrender, "It's their thing, it's all them. I told you, they get in your head…"

Jack turns; the way Dylan trailed off there worried him. Maybe he'd imagined it but Jack thought his usually-reliable leader had been making some progress. While it was just Petey and Quinn, things seemed to be getting better. Then they disappeared and Doc arrived and now the events of this morning and it's not impossible that he could be backsliding. But when Jack looks, he's just distracted. He has in his hand the invite card. Jack managed to stop obsessively reading it a while back, but he's been turning it over and over on the table, edge to edge so that the corners are starting to wear away white.

"Did I hear somebody yell that it's a theatre?"

"Box seats." You have to laugh. You would have to laugh, at least, if that wasn't probably exactly what they want. The clowns choose a theatre to host their final face-off. It goes right around the circle, past cheap symbolism, past cliché, past overwrought and right back to the top where it's so awful it's actually clever again. Jack is biting back his smile as he brings two fresh coffees to the steel prep counter, but Dylan winces. "Don't. Not you too. _Il Dottore_ thinks it's absolutely hysterical."

Somehow that just makes it harder to fight the slightly desperate laughter. Jack's only option is to change the subject. His eyes dart around frantic until they find the crumpled sheet of paper under Dylan's other hand. He reaches out to take it, "Is that what Petey managed to get?"

"It's mostly history. Nothing that helps us much with what's ahead."

But Jack could argue with that. Once he gets used to the slightly clunky English and those few letters that always look like they were written in a mirror, he finds the scrawl covering one side of the page very useful. These are the things Quinn was able to pass on to Petey after Rebecca left it forgotten on the floor. It helps Jack a lot to know, for instance, how excellent the attempted escape was, how it should have gone so much better. Ten seconds more and it would have worked out perfect. The fact that they didn't make it doesn't matter so much when you consider the effort and co-ordination of trying to accomplish anything without communication, and how close they got in spite of that. It helps Jack hugely, just knowing how strong they can be separately. It gives him hope for what they'll be able to get done if they can all get back in the same room again.

But Dylan watches him reading and doesn't catch this. "See what I mean? Not especially useful."

"I was thinking about that before, though. Doesn't it seem weird to you that Rebecca let them talk to each other at all?"

"You mean like it ought to be obvious that they're the weak link when it comes to both camps staying informed? As gaps in a Chinese wall go they're kind of huge and neon-edged with air horns blaring from either side?"

"Yeah. Like that."

"Normally I would, but you saw her. She's never played a scene like that before, nothing even close. Inexperience, plus the fluster we managed to put on her – thank you for that, by the way –"

"Oh, any time."

"- Those things, plus I just don't think she's that smart. You're not wrong. I thought about all the other things it might be but… But I just can't make any of them work. For instance, if they had somehow pressured Quinn to pass bad intelligence? We'd have something on that page we'd think we could use."

When you put it like that, and the initial buzz of how hard his teammates tried and how well they did has faded, Jack pushes the hasty handwriting away. "So what can we do?" but there's nothing. He knows that. He even knows there's no point in pleading. Though he couldn't say exactly when, it was somewhere couple of days; Jack's over that now. It might have been as he was picking that lock at the Funhouse, or as he was losing consciousness on the floor of the clown's hotel room. It might even have been before that, when he was alone except for Lula asleep. Somewhere amongst it all he got over this idea of depending on other people, even Dylan. He's stopped assuming everybody else has already got a better plan in mind already.

And validation comes down swift. "Show up," Dylan says, with all the enthusiasm it deserves. "Play it out."

"No offence, but that's not the best plan we've ever had. And some of the plans we _have_ had have been pretty ropey." A beat, and a beat more to turn it into a pause. He repeats a little quicker, "No offence."

"None taken, on either count. Although the most recent of the ropey plans to which I assume you're referring could turn out to be the best rehearsal we ever could have wanted for this."

"Tell me about hands again. Go on. See what happens."

So Dylan tells him nothing. Both hands, left and right, he raises again, showing them empty and harmless. The silence left is empty too, and in the end he might as well have come out and said it; Jack hears it bouncing around inside his skull anyway. It may, in fact, have been there for hours. _Left hand right hand_ , but this is more than that. To quiet his pulse, since he's starting to feel it in his ears, in the side of his neck, he reaches for the cards in his back pocket. This is more than the left and right hand. This is walking into somebody else's show with no script, no prompts, no guarantees. Not so much that you can't know what the other hand is doing, though that is undeniable and truer than ever, more that you become a hand splayed out on a table while the other is fist bringing a knife stuttering down and down between your fingers.

Half a deck between his fingers, swinging out to cut in beneath the other half, the completed deck dropping into his left hand, Jack can feel every twitch of every muscle. You think about something enough you become aware of it. Here's a thing he does on autopilot. He does it to calm his nerves. And today it feels almost unfamiliar again.

It catches him. At first he hardly notices how familiar it seems to Dylan. "Listen", and Jack has to look up, to snap out of it, only to follow a fixed gaze back down to his weaving fingers. "Listen, I know I haven't given you a lot of reason to trust me lately-"

Jack falters. What'd he miss? Where is this coming from? How far away was his mind, has Dylan been talking before now?

But the next twinge that runs from the base of his thumb takes him back. To Rome, to the balcony. Another evil early morning, that vicious moment before Dylan left, when he put the deck down on the stone rail to test the extent of his injuries and his lies, _Cut_.

"No," he stutters. Stops the deck moving so abruptly he almost loses a card or two off the top and his other hand has to pinch it back into a block, "No, hang on, that's not what I was getting at."

"Yeah, well, it's where it got us, so just listen. I dropped the ball, okay? I was thinking of myself when I should have been thinking of you guys and I'm sorry."

But Jack isn't listening at all. He never stopped shaking his head. And he was about to explain himself when Dylan decided to confess so here, at the first pause for breath, he goes right on ahead with that. "It's not that we don't trust you, it's _never_ been that. How could it be? But you have to _give_ us something to trust. I get why you couldn't tell me about Monte Carlo, at the time it was still worth protecting Henley. Fine. But you have to give us _something_."

Dylan nods like this is nothing new to him. It's what he would have said, maybe, only said better.

In answer, he starts to stand. Taking his coffee with him, he leaves the invitation behind. He tosses it down, points to it as he leaves. "Eight p.m.," he says, the time on the card. "I'm off the hook until after that, right? Because honestly, Jack? Until then? I got nothing to give."


	60. Chapter 60

There's no stealth, no sneaking around required. After all, they were invited. The theatre has its main doors right at the end of a bridge. What remains of the Horsemen, and thankfully they make the less-ragged half than the various prisoners could, stand at the crest and know they can be seen. Their entrance was written for them.

Take a good look at them though. There's strength here, a quiet wary fortitude that plainly states control is overrated anyway. Cruel experience has taught them all too well, you can plan out a play to the _second_ and you still never know what's going to happen. In fact, the more care is taken to make sure something goes the way you want, the less room is left for error. Plan to the second and it only takes one second's interruption to blow the whole show. Under better circumstances it might have been a welcome change for them, getting to be the nasty surprise instead of the victim for once.

They stand still for a few seconds, staring down another of these smirking dichotomies they keep walking into lately. Beautiful architecture, ancient art, soaring columns and all that historical atmosphere lingering as if the stones could breathe it in and out, but inside you know there's lunacy wound up and ready to spring. No one has asked, but if they did, Lula could perhaps put it best; she decided many hours since, she doesn't like Venice. 'Dishonest' is the word she'd use to describe it.

"Remember," and with Dylan starting they start together towards the doors, "the trick to playing it by ear is certainty. Don't do anything unless you're one-hundred percent sure. There's three of us; what's clear to you, the other two might not catch on to. We could trip each other up quicker than we'd help. Be _sure_. And if anybody in there wants to talk, let them. Push them into it if you can. Nothing monsters like better than talking about themselves so if you can get them going, it gives your mind time to work, time to be elsewhere."

"You told us all this before we left," Jack mutters. Lula says nothing; she, of all people, knows better than to interrupt somebody who talks to comfort themselves.

"Fine. But one more thing; don't make this any bigger than it has to be. We take what's ours and we get out." No dissent. Maybe it's not the easiest advice in the world to take – there's nobody here without a personal reason to go after Pantalone, on top of their group loyalties – but they all knew this already. There'll be another, better time to come at the clowns. "Probably be tough enough just getting that much done." His hand on one of the double doors, "They're not going to make our people easy to… Oh."

Across the red-carpet lobby, directly opposite the door, Merritt McKinney sits on the full display in a glass-fronted ticket booth. Negatives include that he is tied to his chair and completely enclosed. On the plus side, he is fully recognizable now.

Lula is three steps gone, running, while Dylan and Jack are still scanning for potential traps. Whether it's trust or naiveté lets her keep doing that, it is rewarded one more time when nothing untoward happens.

Slowing to a stop, "Which one are you?"

"You can check me over for surgery scars if you want."

"So what?" she grins, "Do I hug the booth or…?"

"No, you get me out of it. Door's right behind me there." She almost runs again, stopped by, "Locked." Lula stays put and it's Jack who looks around for some way to get to the back of the booth. Dylan sees the staff-only door off the lobby first and points it out with an extraneous warning to be careful. As he steps up to the glass, Merritt's eyes aren't on him but all around, over his shoulders, craning to see behind, trying to look out the door while it's still swinging shut, "No clowns? I thought you had a couple on side."

The question gets skipped. Time is short and Dylan would say his own is more important. "Anything we need to know?"

A tight shake of the head, "It's been radio-silence since we got caught this morning. Tell you one thing, though, Henley's the first one up for trouble."

"Why's that?"

"Becky Dasko. Maybe Pantalone only used her for access, but she's being richly rewarded."

"All her Christmases at once."

"Birthdays too." Dylan winces; jealousy's an ugly motive. It's common enough, along with greed and anger. But you can reason with the last two. Jealousy is unreasonable by nature. You go past reason to even get there. Not that he had any real intention of reasoning with Rebecca anyway but it was nice to think, for a moment, that he might be that magnanimous. Merritt pulls him out of these thoughts; looking almost rueful, like he knows the question will be unwelcome, "Are you going to be… _alright_ in there?"

Alright. Under control, he means. He means capable of making smart and objective decisions. "Obviously." But Merritt's eyes slide to the side again. Dylan follows them and finds Lula shaking her head. "Listen, it's not an issue, okay?"

He turns back to Merritt. He realizes his mistake in the same moment he feels Lula move. Positioning, caught between people, between breaths, it's a weak moment. He's very susceptible, when she grabs his collar, already off balance when she uses that grip to throw him jolting into the front of his jacket. That wide-eyed second of shock, half an inch from the glass, he's totally open. The words Merritt mutters through the old brass teller grille are barely audible. Dylan couldn't repeat them afterward. And he definitely, shaking out of Lula's grip, throwing her arm away hard, doesn't feel any different.

Lula, pouting like a child, "That's for putting me to sleep way back on the train, man."

"I did that for you."

"Same."

"It won't work," he tells them both, and he's sincere. Could they, or anybody with half a brain, really believe he'd recruit a mentalist if he couldn't hold out against that kind of manipulation? Besides which, though they may have caught him off guard, he was never totally out of the moment. That's something else he couldn't allow. No, Dylan was never out of the moment – he never stopped counting. "Merritt, can you hear Jack back there yet?"

A few awkward hops of the chair, Merritt turns himself to the door. Head tilting toward it, "Nothing."

This time when Lula takes off Dylan is less inclined to trust her remarkable luck, and this time he's close enough to grab her back. Now, maybe none of that tells you anything. Just physical things, just little acts, and they come from protective instincts on both their parts more than any conscious choice. But learn something from the _next_ move in this unthinking dance; when Dylan puts her back, a half-step behind him, Lula allows it. Staying close, and out at his shoulder rather than behind his back, but she allowed him to go ahead of her. She lets him be the first to edge open the door with the plaque reading 'private' on it.

The hall beyond is dark and dingy, with stained industrial carpet and faded posters for past plays on the walls. And there is nothing wrong with that; this theatre has more in common with Il Dottore's infamous party venue than somewhere like the Funhouse. It's a working, functional environment and open to the public. As much as they might _want_ glaring neon arrows pointing them in bizarre directions, an electrified doorknob, a trapdoor, they have no right to expect it.

The explanations aren't so obvious here.

Here they get to see the door Jack should be working at right now, and no Jack, and a million motes of dust turning the weak light milky and liquid. No airhorns, no cackling, no dancing animals.

Except that, if you go to that door and you turn around one-eighty, the poster on the opposite wall is newer than the rest. Brand new, brightly coloured, pretending to be trailing Pagliacci but you don't have to look too close to spot the joke; the whole one-sheet is Pantalone's grinning face.

There's one painful moment where everything they ought to say runs through their heads, all the easy obvious things. They should have known, Jack walked into a trap, who's fault is it. But it's only a moment and it passes. Dylan checks over his shoulder, makes sure the other direction is a dead end. Then he walks a little further on. Lula, with the same wordless resignation, kneels to make an attempt on the locked door. It's a poor attempt and she knows it but there's always the hope you'll get lucky.

When Dylan reaches the corner of the hallway he opts to explore no further. The lights go out up ahead. The dark itself doesn't put him off, just the flicked switch, and the thought of who might have flicked it. So instead he stops, leaning back against the wall. And since it was so successful with Rebecca he summons every scrap of unimpressed he's got and calls out, "Alright. Let's see him. I want proof of life before I take another step."

"Sure thing, handsome!" and down beyond the dark where the yellow light opens out again, thin and murky as if they were underwater, one body drags another into sight. Eyes adjusting over dimness and distance, they are indistinct to Dylan at first, many-limbed and monstrous. Both his hands have been in his pockets, just in case. But they aren't shaking. He notes this with what would be interest except that his focus is very much elsewhere.

"Dylan," Jack says, and by his voice Dylan is able to pick him out, "Meet Columbina."

All seven-feet-and-change of Columbina may consider themselves met within the second it takes to scan her top to bottom. Dylan's proud guess is that's there's been a struggle; Collie's classic French-maid get-up is far too painted on to ever get dishevelled, but the lace-frilled headpiece pinned to her hair has come unstuck at one side, hanging down sadly. You could almost laugh, except that the knife at Jack's throat glints very much like the real thing.

"Collie, this is Dylan Shrike."

The hostage making the introductions; Dylan would call it polished, he'd call it neat patter but you can tell from Columbina's twisting pout, she thinks different. She would call it a good gag and it kills her that, so far, she's being outdone by a tawdry little magician. Maybe that's even more powerful than ignoring them, refusing to find them funny – be funnier first.

"Why, Mr Shrike! I oughta known you on sight, I've heard so much about you. I don't know _how_ I got it in my head you'd be a tall, distinguished gentleman of colour with shoulders broad as a river barge."

Then comes the mock-thoughtful pause, the preparation for the punchline, and she's so ready for it, she's practiced this, this is delivery perfected in front of a dozen mirrors and more imaginary audiences, until Jack mutters, "That's _always_ in your head." Collie deflates. She twists the knife closer to Jack's throat, catching the slightest scratch, as if she hopes to poke a hole and all the air will go out of him too.

"Hey!" The dark is no deterrent when Dylan sees blood. He starts towards them, only to stop dead when he sees the knife press again and Jack is calling out to him to back off. "Pantalone wants me here to watch, right? Well, one more mark on any of my people and I walk."

Collie laughs, "With all due respect, Mr Shrike, like hell you will. Just leave them all here?"

"Why not? What would he do to them? It's no fun without an audience."

"I'd like to see you try it."

"Try me."

She considers him, one eyebrow raised. An ugly sort of a standoff and it ends with the tip of her head, lips parting to call to someone who is not yet in the scene, some secret waiting in the wings and Dylan knows from that, he's about to lose out. "Cap, baby?" Collie yells, "This clown-hating white-meat macho-man says _try_ him."

Follow the direction of her voice and you look back the way they've all just come. In better light and clear as day, Lula is no longer by the locked door. She's half-standing, feet still tucked under backward; she was pulled straight up from her knees. The Captain has one arm hooked through hers and the other wrapped around her head, hand over her mouth. Her free hand is balled up and beating at him but there's too much bulk and blubber for her to make a difference.

Like Collie reverting to her most traditional costume, Cap is in the pressed white uniform of a naval officer. His moustache has been waxed into especially elaborate curls. He approaches now, a powerful stride that makes no accommodations for his prisoner. Lula's feet drag between his steps. Every time she slips forward or tries to stand, the slightest pull on her arm or face leaves her floundering again.

"You move quiet," Dylan mutters, "for a big guy."

"You're easily distracted, for a magician."

"This changes nothing. Nothing will happen to them."

"Right brave thought, Shrike," the Captain slimes. "But not sure you've got the courage of your convictions, eh, laddie? _I'd_ say you're probably right. You could abandon them all and nothing will happen to them. But some risk to take, eh-what? Even the slightest harm befalls but one of them-"

"And you lose 'em all, sugar." Collie's voice splits Dylan's attention. He falls a half-step deeper where the lights are shut off, trapped between them. "Wouldn't _one_ of them ever speak to you again. You got interests other than your own to protect, oh-brave-and-fearless-leader."

Dylan flinches. It's not the old fear but a nastier one; there is a phrase that he's _used_ to hearing as a joke, as half-felt sarcasm at worst. _Brave and fearless leader_ ; coming out of a painted mouth, it puts the joke very much on him.

Columbina, being the one with a free hand, reaches out to a switch on the wall.

The little click doesn't bring the ceiling lights back up. Rather it shuts them off and plunges them all into absolute dark. Absolute except for the lines of glaring, screaming flashbulbs that ignite around a door at Dylan's right. Though he could reach out and touch it barely lifting his arm, he didn't see it until now. Now he can't miss it. Airhorns and glowing arrows and dancing bears, or almost – in carefully-wrought neons, as tall as he is, a classic clown in ruff and pointed hat is inviting him through.

"Go on now, handsome. Didn't nobody ever tell you it ain't polite to keep your host and hostess waiting?"

"Chin up, old spud; it's only the end of the world."

These are the cold encouragements that bear him on. The handle is right in the centre of the neon clown's white glove. Dylan has to reach out and shake the monster's hand to keep going.


	61. Chapter 61

Not a half-step through the door, it slams so hard Dylan feels the rush on the back of his neck.

It's standard stuff, haunted-house walkthrough stuff, creates a sensation of isolation, turns anything into a trap. A slamming door is a cut-off. Associated with things like being locked in, with hiding, all that anxiety of putting a door between yourself and someone who's yelling. Standard. Nothing to it. The only Dylan finds even remotely impressive is the effect it has on him personally; absolutely nothing. Not the slightest tremor. He's able to stand in what should be a terrifying moment and observe it objectively.

Panic doesn't send him stumbling through another dark room. He holds his nerve, stands where he is, until someone decides to turn the lights on.

He already knew by the echoes, this is the theatre itself. Smaller than most in this part of the city but with the detail and opulence of exclusivity. The tiers curl up into the cupolaed ceiling like a clam-shell with the chandelier raining from the apex. At first only a single light burns in the centre of it. It draws the eye, and just as you begin to stare the rest of the bulbs flare sun-bright and blinding, throwing the auditorium into gold glow and shadow.

"All alone?" and this is said with real dismay, with the kind of pain a human heart is wired to react to. There are still black spots on Dylan's vision from the sudden light but he looks.

At the edge of the stage, in front of the lowered curtain, sits a red velvet couch littered with plush pillows shaped like hunting trophies, a stag's head, a wolf, a bear and what at first blinded glance Dylan takes to be a life-sized ostrich. Three, four blinks later, that resolves to become Rebecca Dasko, who has traded in Hepburn for Stanwyck, all black taffeta and peachy marabou. But she might as well be a pillow; she's décor, set-dressing. The main event is sitting at the opposite arm with her leaning against him.

Pantalone leans forward, craning as if he's missed something, as if Dylan might have hidden some back-up between the seats, behind a pillar. The plaintive look on his face is real. He stands up, still scanning the stalls, and Rebecca crashes sideways without his support.

She pouts, bawls at her not-so-stalwart mentor, "But you said it was time for me to meet the Doctor!"

"No, _passerotta_ , I said you should _see_ a doctor. We're not expecting that limp noodle anyhow." This little snipe seems to bolster him again, to lessen the initial sting. Pantalone moves along the edge of the stage with fresh confidence, open arms, easy body language. He mirrors Dylan making his unhurried way between two rows to the centre aisle. In the end, they're facing each other and something in that feels very obvious, very natural to them both. "But I had thought you might bring my son home."

"Petey's fine where he is."

"Stashed him somewhere, huh?"

"Something like that."

"Well, I suppose that was about the smartest thing you could have done."

Rebecca chimes in, her timing just a second – or three – off, "That's why he's so surprised."

"See, my Becky there was so upset after she visited you this morning. And not just because of how cruel you were; a little rich, in my opinion, given the early endeavours of some of _your_ family -"

" - That rabbit was absolutely fine –"

" – But because you had her convinced, _convinced_ , that Petey is with you now. Of course, you and I know better, don't we, little Dyllie?"

Dylan hardly even flinches at the epithet. Doesn't seize up, doesn't flash back or lose track of himself. Instead he carefully turns. Pantalone is never out of sight, but he's on the periphery. There's space for sneak action, even an attack. But Dylan is able to put on a passable show of not caring, of seeing the potential but gauging the threat to be low. He makes his way to the stageside steps and as he goes explains to Rebecca what Pantalone will already have told her. "Petey's the best bargaining chip I could have wanted. But you've seen the guy; no way I could keep him if he didn't want to be kept. No, best thing to do was talk him round. Act it out like friends. It helped a lot when you showed up with his best friend on a chain. Where is Quinn, by the way?"

The edge of a smile, Pantalone's wary grunt, "What do you care?"

"At least with Quinn around I'd get a laugh." The clown's eyes sweep up to the boxes at their side of the stage, and just at that moment a chain is fiercely rattled above Rebecca's head. Quinn's leash has been padlocked to the polished rail, but it still performs, waving so wide it keeps hitting the framing curtain that hangs right up over the footlights. Every little flap against the heavy velvet has the deliberate thump of a punch well thrown. Dylan finds himself watching the bony hand; he's watched them signing, he knows when there's a message trying to get through. It's the third thump before it reaches him. He nods sharply while Pantalone and Rebecca are still looking up.

And is there a joke? Does he get the laugh he asked for? A joke would be nice, right now, something he could rub the other two's painted noses in.

But no joke comes. Quinn has been silenced, its own rubber chicken stuffed between its teeth at the bulging body, with the feet tied to the scrawny neck behind its head.

"Ah, come on," Dylan sighs. "Not the funny one. Gag _her_ , for Christ's sake," and he flails a limp, frustrated arm at Rebecca. "She's _terrible_."

Pantalone simmers. A large part of his anger comes from the laugh he's struggling with and having to bite it down. Enough of it escapes to just colour his voice at the edges, when he points one meaty finger and asks, "You sure you're Dylan Shrike?"

"I was when I got up this morning."

"Only you look like him, but you don't much sound like him. Shrike's an edgy, defensive kind of guy. Stammers a lot, when I'm in the room. You, on the other hand and if you don't mind my saying so, are doing alright."

With a smile, Dylan leans closer, "Maybe I don't believe in you anymore." One hand clutching his chest, Pantalone staggers backward, his other fingers balling up a fistful of the stage curtain. It's not a bad heart attack by any means but Dylan rolls his eyes. "All this play-acting, I've been over that for years. It was the spying I had trouble with. But then, you knew that."

"We know everything."

"Yeah, that's the old song right there. Truth is, it was you who blew it. You and all this loony bullshit lately. Because what did you do with all that impossible knowledge? You got jealous of me and mine. You're a green-eyed, self-righteous, self-important _clown_. Don't get me wrong, it used to be scary. Really, it did. Terrifying, actually. … _Right_ up to the point where it became pathetic."

Pantalone straightens up so fast even Rebecca gasps. Dylan backs up but only one step, just taking himself out of range of the pointing finger that sweeps forward still hooked full of curtain, only dropping the velvet when it brushes the tip of his nose. "Now, listen here-" but Dylan's not listening at all, doesn't even hear himself being told to listen. He's looking past Pantalone, where the curtain pulled forward, where it left a gap centre stage.

Something moved in the dark back there, down at his own level, and high up above it something was glinting. The lens of a spotlight maybe, the rail of catwalk and maybe nothing more than that, but something glinted and down below something looked like it was struggling.

"What's back there?" He could have cut the clown off midsentence for all he's aware. Could care less too, only approaches the spot where the gap was, pointing, reaching out. Pantalone lashes out, a fist closing around his wrist. Undeterred, biting every word like a bullet, "What's back there?"

Tipping his head to Rebecca, "You want to tell him, _gattina_?"

"Let him see for himself." Another pointing finger; the manicured red talon is good, but Rebecca's arm is too soft and limp, has none of the balletic tension Dylan's come to expect from the very least of a clown's movements. She pushes his focus away, back how he came, to the wings. Two ropes hang down side by side, one gilded and tasselled, one plain and dull. "The gold one," she yawns.

This is one part of the game he has to play along with. Dylan goes to the ropes and has just wrapped his hands around the gold.

Rebecca snaps, "Wait! Oh God, Panty, sweetie, it was gold, wasn't it?"

"The one to avoid? Yeah, that's the gold."

"No, the one he's supposed to pull."

"Wait, I thought you were talking about the gold one?"

"I was, is that the one he's s-?"

Dylan cuts in, "She's terrible," again. But still, he takes his hands off the rope, backs away from both of them. Instead he pulls the edge of the curtain back and walks across the stage by only the dull green emergency lights. Something is gleaming overhead, he was right about that. It is lower than the catwalks, though, and a straight edge, nothing like a spotlight lens. Now that he's close he can see a two shape straining to get free. One is tied down to a table, about waist high, under the gleaming line, the other to a post upstage. Dylan can hear them, the mutter and cough of them trying to call out through gags.

You have to wonder if Pantalone has only just discovered the joy of a captive audience, of muting his hecklers. Dylan finds his thoughts go to Petey and disagrees.

But that is just conjecture, and a little mean too. Especially considering that the clown has decided to be helpful; with Dylan opting out of the ropes, he's stepped up, has hauled down hard on the gold pull to lift the curtains swooping up into accustomed swags, shaking dust from the velvet as they part. The fire of the chandelier floods through.

The gleam above becomes a sudden glare, hiding itself in the light in those opening seconds.

Even when the first flash fades, Dylan isn't entirely sure what it is. Or rather, he knows and can't accept it. Some things are too bizarre. He's seen a lot in his life and especially in the past couple of weeks, and a lot of things that might be termed impossible until you see them done. But it takes a lot of staring before he can convince himself this is real.

The straight line he saw before, polished enough to catch even the slightest light, is the razor edge of a guillotine blade. Eight feet wide maybe, four feet high, suspended under the catwalks on pulleys, ropes that pull straight back across the stage. There are mechanics, and in a better moment Dylan could understand them. But the upshot is, if he'd pulled that dull rope, the blade would have slammed down out of thin air and sliced the victim tied to the table in two.

He already knows who it is. Danny is tied to the post at the back of the stage, so he already knows. Denial is just to help keep the sickened feeling in his stomach from overwhelming him. One more step and he'd have confirmation, so Dylan stays where he is.

Rebecca finally peels herself up from the couch and wobbles over in her feather-trimmed boudoir slippers. She leans over, arms folded on the edge of the table, so that her face is only inches from Henley's.

" _I_ thought my Daniel should go first, but he insisted, didn't you?" A simpering glance across and Danny is yelling through the rainbow-striped handkerchief stuffed in his mouth, shaking his head with such violence his neck could break. "You _did_!" Rebecca insists. She looks Dylan dead in the eye as if begging him to believe her version of events. "He said 'Take Henley first, so she won't have to listen to you anymore.' I mean, Panty says he was kidding but… I guess I just didn't find it very funny."

She waits. For an answer, for a reaction. And there are dozens Dylan could give her but, for one, she doesn't deserve the satisfaction. And for another now, and it's the first time tonight, he's having a little trouble breathing again.

Eventually Rebecca rolls her eyes and rolls her whole self over on one elbow to look around him, whining, "Panty, what are we _waiting_ for?"

He rushes to her side, lifts her up from the table, hands either side of her face. Dylan takes a step closer to Henley only to have them both reach down by their sides, pulling his-and-hers nine-millimetre handguns, black and pink, to hold him off.

They do that without even looking at him, without interrupting the gag. In comforting hush Panty tells her, "Just for Cap and Collie, sweetheart. Can't do a thing without an audience."

"But I'm bored and I don't like her!"

"Both very valid reasons, but you want people to talk about you afterward, don't you? About how great you were?"

Dylan mutters again that Rebecca is nothing but terrible. Again, they're not paying him much attention anymore. The lovebird wittering goes on while he looks up again at the mechanics, the rig that holds the rope. He looks to Danny, thinking maybe he might have spent his time captive figuring something out, but that was never going to happen. Not with Henley tied down about to be cut in half for the last time in a long and illustrious career; Danny's having trouble looking past the end of his nose and besides, it was dark until just a minute ago.

So imagine his relief when the main door, the double doors from the lobby, rattle. They're bolted but whoever's outside is undeterred. At the first booming thump of a broad shoulder levelled against the lock, the hasp is already straining in the door, and Pantalone's grip on the gun is tightening.

"Expecting somebody?" but Dylan, third time running and starting to feel a little underappreciated, goes unnoticed.

Their indifference gives him time to get himself in front of the ropes again. He's not much protection, outnumbered and outgunned and with two Horsemen that can be used against him right there, but he's something.

At the second charge, the screws holding the bolt in place start to show. At the third, they are jolted free and the bolt hits the carpet with a thud. Because it had been held so fast the door doesn't fly open, but drifts, gradually giving up a silhouette cut out in red against the last of sunset.

Pantalone's gun is lowered again. Not all the way, but enough. He steps forward, back to the footlights. His smile is wide and bright and very, very unkind. "You," he mutters, "Glad you showed up. This time I think I'll kill you good."


	62. Chapter 62

"Kill me good? _Good?_ "

The shadow at the door glides forward until the lights give it form and depth. There is, of course, no one it could be except for Doc. The wheelchair is new, though, no one was expecting that. It doesn't seem to be anything to worry about; Doc has his legs crossed, reclining sideways against the arm. It would be terribly uncomfortable to roll himself. Luckily he's got Petey ambling along at the handles.

" _Good_ ," Doc says again, and it's Petey he's addressing, Petey shaking his head in mock-disbelief. "He'll kill me good, he says. Panty, you lumbering Neanderthal, if you're going to insist on puerile threats, at least make some effort to do it correctly. Pitiful grammar is one thing, but _accuracy_ … you can't say what's going to happen 'this time', since you lacked the spine to make your intended attempt on my life in Monte Carlo."

Rebecca flings herself back down on the couch. "Like… I'm not kidding, I'm not even being funny right now - "

"When were you ever?" Dylan calls. Only Quinn's muffled laugh acknowledges him.

" – But I didn't get a word of that."

She snaps gasping to attention when Panty tells her, "He called me chicken." But her reaction doesn't really matter. Put so succinctly and still through that wry smile, spoken when the rival chieftains have yet to look at anything each other, that single tension drowns out anything else. Hard to say how long it would go on, except that Petey decides to drive the point home. He folds his arms up into wings, bobs clucking around the aisle. The wheelchair follows the auditorium's gentle slope, rolling until it bounces against the front of the stage. Eye contact becomes gradually impossible. Pantalone is left gazing down between his own feet.

Eventually, with a little shuffle of repositioning, Doc hauls himself up enough to hook his chin between two footlights. One hand flops up between the next pair. "Give me the gun."

"No."

" _Now_ , don't pout, we discussed this. Who said you could have one again? Who broke into the safe for you?"

"Stop nagging me! Anyway, I'm not telling, it's none of your business who had more faith in me than _you_."

"You remember why we put that silly gun in the safe to begin with, don't you?"

Is this too much nagging? Is there something in Doc's tone? Or is this just too perfect an opportunity, a joke that ought not be missed – Pantalone turns away at this unmissable chance, the weapon coming up again and, again, levelling at Dylan. The shrug, the nonchalance, the narrowing eyes hide vicious behind the offhand answer, "Because I used it."

The muzzle's one black eye stares Dylan down. By wavers left or right it dares him to dodge, tries to tempt him, begging him to make its day. Pantalone is electric, the dark mutter, barely even a laugh, bubbling up behind his grinding teeth. For the first time since the lobby, Dylan finds himself brushing against the line where bemusement too easily turns to terror. He wonders, and not for the first time, if clowns die young. If their hearts give out, so often and so fiercely slammed from zero to sixty, crushed every time brutal reality crashes through the façade, like turning the gravity back on in space.

"Blame him," Pantalone sighs, tipping his head toward Doc. "If I'd had my way you'd have lived a whole ten minutes more."

The tremor in his tightening trigger finger could be hesitation or else he's just savouring the moment. Both Doc and Dylan looking on are generous enough to hope it's the latter; he might as well savour what's about to fizzle out damp and black in front of his eyes. And it really must be a beautiful moment to one with murder on his mind. Sadly, it is blasted out of existence by Rebecca's shrill and sudden scream.

Pantalone spins on his heel to see her arched squealing against the back of the couch. There, at her back, with a twisted and merciless fistful of teased blonde hair, the still-gagged Quinn bounces with joy. The collar is off its neck, leash wound whip-like around Rebecca's arm, dragging it out and back so the hand that holds the pink gun flaps tight and useless. Through the rubber chicken, noises that may or may not be, "Drop it," a long low warning that has to be repeated more than once. The heavy clatter doesn't come until a last, more powerful yank at both hair and arm together.

There are no consonants in Quinn's victory song, but there's no mistaking its meaning either so it really doesn't matter.

It collars Rebecca while Pantalone fights with himself; the urge to shoot Quinn instead is overwhelming and immediate. But, ultimately, he's got more at stake tonight. Deep down he knows that. And the whole thing takes place across only a couple of seconds, so he's really not expecting any trouble when he turns back to Dylan.

Certainly he's not expecting to find Dylan right at his back, to find they are toe-to-toe when he turns. He's not expecting the heel of Dylan's hand in the inside of his wrist. A shot is fired in tension or panic but the bullet burrows harmless into the boards of the stage. Another twist, Dylan's second hand spinning Pantalone's forearm back on itself, and the clown's grip loosens. The first hand just reaches over and takes it from his palm. Dylan flicks on the safety and pitches it back deep into the stalls.

No struggle, and even afterward not a punch thrown; a certain vagueness has come over Pantalone. Struggling with something, yet to fully accept that he has lost everything he's worked so hard for. You'd forgive him that; it's happened quick. But deeper down there's a darker, less easily explicable thought. That's what freezes him, that's what's killing him. That's what rouses Dylan's pity because he knows the thought very well.

Here in a clown's eyes he sees reflected the fear that has always crippled him in their presence. Seeing it, finally he can articulate it. Put in so many words, it simply runs, _You shouldn't be able to do that_.

"Shouldn't have turned your back." A petty sort of guy would enjoy hissing this up into the slack, greying face. Dylan's disappointed in himself. "You said it before; I'm not myself today."

That's when Panty shakes loose of shock, tenses for attack. Dylan's more than ready to defend himself. Looking forward to it, in fact, just a little, just in a way he would never admit. It's certainly nothing he's ever dreamt about, punching a clown in the face, breaking a clown's jaw, there were never any adolescent fantasies about calling an ambulance before beginning and ploughing through right up until he could hear sirens. Even _if_ ambulance response rates in New Jersey can buy you twenty minutes in a non-emergency, it's not something he's ever given any thought to.

He is not at all disappointed to hear Rebecca cry out, "Don't!"

Still a step behind her, Quinn is nodding agreement. This makes things a little difficult for Petey. He's got one hand working at the rubber chicken knot at the back of Quinn's bobbing head, and the pink gun in the other, held straight and steady and true at Pantalone.

"Yeah," the once-loved father mutters, "Not scared of him." So with casual clumsiness, even a little dangerous juggling, Petey passes the gun to Quinn, who has just finished tying the end of the leash around Rebecca's wrists. He barely looks over as he does it, focusing instead on the knot. But in all of it, there is never _not_ a finger on the trigger, never _not_ one squinting aiming eye fixed on Pantalone. He sighs, "Walked into that. But you won't use it, kiddo. Not on your ol' Pops."

It answers him still in those smothered vowels, and Petey stops unpicking so both hands can say something of depth and importance. How, when neither of them can speak at all, they still manage to speak in perfect unison, is beyond most of their ad-hoc audience.

It's Doc who translates. He has abandoned the wheelchair and stands at the end of the aisle in his neatest blue scrub jacket. He clears his throat with quiet dignity, "They said you're not their real father and you never will be." Doc starts towards the side steps, still speaking, but Dylan's attention flickers elsewhere; thinking of Henley on the table, how difficult it would be to free him, how quick. It's killing him, just standing here and her one stumble, one fraying strand, from death. But he doesn't dare leave that rope unprotected and Pantalone so close by. This is what a team is supposed to be for, you know; a man alone gets stuck in tough decisions, impossible ones. A man with a friend standing close by could just nod and consider some other task taken care of. Why the hell didn't somebody get Merritt loose? The chance couldn't have been stolen so perfectly from them that they missed it completely, and at any rate –

At any rate, he didn't get to go twenty-rounds with Pantalone and he doesn't get to beat himself up either – seems Doc is going to help him out.

A sniping soliloquy Dylan missed has brought him to the stage now. Standing at the end of the couch, brushing away a haze of drifting marabou still hanging in Rebecca's wake, he reaches out to take the gun from Quinn. "Give it up. We're going to do this civilly, and without bloodshed, like reasonable adults. Besides which, it's not your colour."

Ugly hesitation; hating it, Quinn slams it sideways into his waiting hand. Doc begins to thank it, but in that same second Petey finally succeeds and the gag springs free. Between noises like a cat bringing up a hairball, Quinn chews its dried-out tongue, getting ready to speak.

" _No._ " Doc's warning is stern and unequivocal. "Quinn, don't say it. It's an unforgivable line."

"Oh, the little hack's going to say it, alright. Even Becky can see that one coming, can't you, _cucciola_?" But it's only at the pet name that Rebecca even realizes she's being addressed. She rises up out of her hawk-like hunch on the couch, stops glaring at Henley just long enough to emit a 'Huh?' of such absolute and unsalvageable vacuity that it's too much. It's the last straw, the last thing Pantalone could have possibly lost. He heaves another sigh and heaves himself to the edge of the stage, sits down there with his feet swinging over the edge

"I don't… Am I supposed to-?"

Doc slaps the back of her head and Rebecca shuts up. Close by them Quinn writhes, a parody of agony, biting in its straining lips.

"For Christ's sake," Dylan yells, "Say it and go cut Danny down!"

" _Tastes like chicken_! Oh God… Don't anybody look at me, I can feel you all looking at me, you all would have said the self-same thing in my position, you never could have swallowed that. Except for Cher Horror-wits there, I can't see her right now but I bet she's _actually_ laughing."

Quinn can witter all it likes. Petey too, Petey could magically sprout a fresh tongue right now and answer it back, the two of them could recite poetry, break out with _Brindisi,_ they could scream open the gates of hell or summon it up to meet them. Even Doc can join that diabolical choir for all Dylan cares. Just so long as he keeps one eye on Rebecca and the other on Pantalone. Just so long as Quinn still has that little penknife in its hand, hacking at the leather strap around Danny's chest. So long as Petey keeps working at the shackles on Henley's ankles. They can talk all night and tell every unforgivable joke in the book, if only everything just stays how it is in this moment.

Because Dylan might be winning. He looks around and he can't see anything in the immediate vicinity going against him. How he got here, the whole hideous, writhing, thorn-choked road, starts to matter less and less with every passing second. Because this is where he ended up. Doesn't he even have the numbers? Dylan looks around, counts his enemies against his allies, doubts himself and counts again. Yes, he's got the numbers. All he has to do is stay in front of a rope and pray nothing changes and…

And Dylan might actually be winning.

You'd think he'd have learned by now never to pray. Don't hope. Don't think about it, just wait and see. There is some cruel fate up above that knows the precise callused scratch of Dylan crossing his fingers and comes bolting like a hunter's hound every time. This time it comes bounding in at the side door, the same one that brought him here. Now that the chandelier is lit the neons are faint, but the clown on the door still has all its colours.

By contrast, the clown standing in the doorway, having opted to go _without_ a novelty tie today, has none bar the red nose stitched to his mask.

Dylan recalls him all too well, that too-long limo ride in Monte Carlo. "Hi, Valerie…"


	63. Chapter 63

There are plenty of reasons to be wary of Valerie. A lot of them can be seen with the naked eye and a lot of those are glaring obvious. But what ought to make you really nervous, and Doc and Dylan catch on to it quick, is not Valerie himself, but the effect he has. Namely on Pantalone.

There are other effects. On Doc, for instance – he crosses the stage, putatively to keep a better eye on Valerie and on that door, but you can't help but notice, he puts himself between Petey's bulk and Dylan's skill. Quinn stops talking and hides itself behind Danny. Rebecca rears up like a cobra; her hands may be tied behind her back but one foot is on the floor, and bouncing, ready to go, and this is where you ought to be getting nervous, because she isn't even looking at the masked monster who just arrived. She's looking at Pantalone and that brings us neatly to the real point – he's perked up. That slump has gone out of his shoulders. Still careful, for now, but he knows the game has changed. Still outnumbered, but if anybody counts as the big guns, it's the bodyguard.

Slow, deliberately non-threatening, Pantalone gets up from the edge of the stage. In the same space of time Dylan gets to Doc, takes the gun from him into his own more expert hand. He's not a bad marksman, and has the Quantico scores to prove it. A shoulder, a leg, that's no trouble at all and he considers it. Neutralize a threat before it becomes one. Call it training. Call it a preventative measure. Call it extreme duress.

But Valerie hasn't so much as grunted yet. Weigh the possibilities; Petey has only just gotten the first of Henley's shackles loose. Quinn's farther along with the ropes on Danny but they both need time. Pantalone could still do damage – why risk his rage?

So Dylan suffers his new exuberance, watches him spreading his hands, "Valerie! You don't know how good it is to not-see a friendly face." And yet he steps back, away. Counterintuitive maybe, but pay attention and you'll see exactly what he's doing – getting behind Dylan and Doc, making himself last in line and, thanks to Dylan stepping up to take the gun, the closest to the ropes. One glance back and Dylan shifts his aim. Doc can do something for once, Petey can step up, but he's keeping both eyes and the gun on Pantalone. Quinn, Quinn will take care of the rest of the stage, that feral freak is more than capable, let it put its vicious skills to use.

"Becky and I have missed you," the usurper continues. "Maybe you can help us explain to the missus, he's out of date, right? I had to move things along. You've been with me on this, Valerie, you've been there every step. And you're so eloquent when you get going. Help me; how do I make this pissy little bitch understand, the organization has to get back to its _roots_ , back to whatever-it-takes, to politics, manipulation, assassination. Beginning with meddling, do-gooder magicians interfering, looking for attention when we're perfectly capable of working from behind-the-scenes-"

Wailing frustration, Quinn gives up on hiding, or at least thinks it's more important to cry out, "Val, say something so he'll shut up! Say anything, it all sounds the same coming out of you anyway."

The colossus turns on it. Quinn darts away again under his fierce glare, yelps when Valerie feints in its direction. Crying out apologies and excuses, hacking faster at Danny's ropes but who's looking at Quinn right now? Look at Valerie. Look at the eyes beyond the mask. They burn. They want to flay their current focus alive, want to take the little clown to pieces. They want blood, and they scream when they realize they're not getting it. Valerie turns away from Quinn. He fixes on Pantalone again.

And Dylan mutters, "Wait just a minute," and his free hand stretches out flat towards Doc, pressing gently down, _be calm_. He knows that look. He knows the compelled, unwilling tension in Valerie's steps.

"Tell _Doc_ – " Pantalone's attempts to redirect Valerie's attention are becoming pathetic, " – what an old-fashioned old maid he is. He should know by now I was never the only one who thought so. On that, though, I ought to have a lot more back-up than this. Didn't see Cap on your travels? Or the Queen of Sheba Baby?"

Valerie has taken his first step beyond Doc. A tremor of nervous laughter goes through Pantalone, but he doesn't seem to realize yet the trouble he's in. When Valerie puts out his leather bound hand, Pantalone thinks the proffered shake is friendly. Must be part of some bit he's not in on. He reaches back thoughtless.

His dirty white glove vanishes inside in the black vice grip. There seems no effort at all in Valerie spinning him, turning that too-trusting arm up along his spine. Panty feels it, when he's walked up to the pillar of the wing and shoved against it. Valerie seems to take it pretty much in stride.

He does some yelling while he's pinned there. But while he's pinned there, who gives a damn? Who gives a damn when Quinn is folding away its penknife, done, and Danny is finally stepping away from the post? The clown has trouble staying hidden behind him when he's rushing to Henley, to the shackles at her wrists, but Quinn manages. Only once he's still again does it risk peeking out around him. "Okay, I _like_ New Valerie, and I don't want to jinx it, but-?"

In perfect sync – Dylan's not entirely happy about that – Dylan and Doc both point it back towards the side door. Neither Rebecca or Pantalone saw it; that's the trouble with focus. You look at Valerie, you stay with Valerie and you miss everything going on around him. You miss the shadows out in the hallway, the very particular shape of them, the outline of a distinctive and marginally-too-small hat.

Merritt shows himself just as soon as he's sure things have gone his way. A little sheepish, "Didn't know if that would work. Wasn't sure if he could even hear me through the –" By gestures, he shows he means the whole-head mask.

By similar gestures, Petey and Quinn are discussing the man himself. Read their hands and they couldn't be happier. _Bald eagle!, I promise I never said he was a dick!, I like surprises when they're nice!_ , but it all culminates with the shift to the spoken again, "Big guy, this is hardly the time!" But whatever Petey asked, he insists, stabbing a finger down hard on the table between Henley's feet. Quinn checks around, making sure there's time and no imminent danger, and when it speaks again it gabbles fast as ever, "Miss Reeves, my pal Petey here is totally determined I should tell you, you were always our joint and undisputed favourite. We changed it up when you disappeared off the face of the earth because we didn't know if you were alive or dead, but that was absolutely the only reason. Okay? Okay, Pedrolino? Satisfied?" Petey nods, grinning, without ever looking up from the combination on the shackle.

It's an exchange which serves no purpose other than to be funny and friendly. It's too impossibly _nice_ , too normal and sweet and warm, to have such an opportunity even present itself. As Merritt approaches Dylan asks, pointing a vague circle around himself, "Are you responsible for _this_ too?"

"For what?"

"The fact that I'm standing entirely voluntarily within three feet of three whole clowns."

"You tell me; you said it wouldn't work."

"Yeah, but Lula said it would and I'm starting to think she should be consulted on certain things, like-"

"Like an oracle," Doc adds.

"Exactly like."

At their gathered backs, a delicate, feminine little cough tries to interrupt. With the slightest smile and never really turning, Merritt waves, "We'll get to you, Becky, just chill a sec." Pathetic, really, Rebecca trying to stay relevant when she never was in the first place, when it's over anyway and, in particular, when Pantalone doesn't have a word left to say and Valerie is doing the job of two pairs of handcuffs and a straitjacket. Honestly, she needs to back away. Consider how well she did this morning – remember?, when she cut her many losses at the best possible time? Seems she's lost all that now. Such a pity, when you think about it?

Scarcely have they returned to their conversation when she clears her throat again. Doc is having a little trouble containing his mirth so Dylan is the one who has to turn and face her. "Listen, it's not that we don't think you're important but, Rebecca… Oh."

Nothing draws attention like an 'Oh'. Merritt turns and adds his own to it. Doc turns and tries to make it three, but not half a syllable and it breaks into a howl of laughter. He goes reeling, staggering upstage, lost to it. Maybe he'll join them again later. He leaves a spore or two behind, almost infecting Merritt, but after the first shake of his shoulders he's able to bite it down.

And what is it that so amuses them all? What is it that has even Dylan smirking, and Pantalone is trying so hard to see? Valerie's got his head forced the other way but he's still trying.

Rebecca Dasko has the guillotine rope in both her pink little hands.

Those hands are free, by the way; the leash hangs down loose against her back. No one is overly impressed by this, though she'd probably like them to be. A clown tying up a former magician's assistant, it was never going to hold her. All that time wasted on Valerie, wondering what way he would go, she would have been working at the clumsy knots. Then, freed, she saw them split into two groups, both of them completely absorbed, whether with Pantalone trapped or freeing Henley, and that was the opportunity. Becky crept offstage at one side and back on at the other and there she stands now. The rope is even wrapped around one forearm. All her recent weight falling on that, there's no chance of a slip or her not being strong enough. No chance of her giving up either; you see it in her eyes, narrowed to slits, you see her burning and the grinning, vicious, mistaken righteousness that straightens her back. No, it looks like that rope's getting pulled. Rebecca is pretty determined. Dylan doesn't even try raising the gun again; what good would it do? Look at the lady; the blade is coming down.

Merritt chokes another splutter and Dylan elbows him hard.

"Wow," Rebecca murmurs, "So we've finally figured out what I have to do to get a laugh. What, you don't think I'll do it?"

"Oh, no, no, we can see you're going to do it." This, from Dylan, is too much for Merritt. He slides away biting his lips, until he joins Doc somewhere near the back curtain and lets the laugh go.

"It won't work, y'know. Laughing at me, instead of with me? You already used that trick this morning, I'm so clued up on that, I don't even feel that anymore."

"Good for you."

"I am so goddamn _sick_ of being laughed at!"

As far as Valerie will allow, Pantalone turns his head, "You've been clowning all of two months!"

"She was _never_ –" And somehow Doc finds a flash of perfect seriousness in which to say this, " – A clown."

Rebecca screams through her teeth, stamps her foot, "Shut _up_! That was not what I meant. And _you_!" Her foot wriggles between Valerie's to kick Pantalone. "The _only_ , and believe me – _only_ reason you ever got anywhere near me, was so I could do what I'm about to now. So no more laughing, no more talking –"

Quinn darts up to Dylan's side, "Just a little thing, but Atlas has two tumblers to go on that shackle and Petey's still arguing with the last one, so if you could stall her maybe another sixty seconds, we over here at the Reeves Liberation Front would really appreciate that."

Rebecca answers for him. "No more stalling."

And there, even as three or four of the other players all breathe in to speak again, she makes good on her promise. Quick and without regret, she yanks down the rope. The slip-knot at the top pulls free. You can watch the end of it drop, all the length piling up between Rebecca's feet, or you can watch the bar it was holding shoot across the ceiling under the weight of the enormous blade.

Or you can watch the blade drop.

One of Henley's feet is free but that's not enough to let her go anywhere. In that hideous split second, Danny stops working at her wrist, throws himself long across her. Maybe cutting through him will give enough resistance to lessen her injuries. Down at her feet, Petey ducks. And all of this is in that single racing heartbeat where they all can hear the whistle of the razor edge slicing the air at improbable speed.

At the second heartbeat, you can't hear it anymore.

The guillotine drops all of six feet at speed, and another two or three while slowing down. It stops long before it gets anywhere near Henley.

Rebecca dissolves. She piles up on the floor next to the coiled rope in a lost little cloud of 'what?' and 'No, but…' Looking down at her own guilty hands as if they might be responsible, she misses the real answer.

Look up at the catwalks. Look up, like maybe you think the pulleys got stuck or the blade is caught on something.

Look up and see, the ropes aren't even wound through the pulleys anymore. While motives and mesmerism were played out loud and dramatic below, someone up above was changing the scenery, fixing the special effects. The ropes at either end were taken carefully down one at a time by one stagehand while another held them in place so the blade wouldn't give them away by jolting. They were then, about mid-way along their length, tied to counter-weights up on the catwalk.

It's basic physics – when Rebecca released the blade, the counterweights were shoved over the edge. They balanced the weight of the guillotine, first stopping it, and now it is gently beginning to rise again, groaning a little because the weights are not quite the same either side. By which we mean, Columbina weighs a little less than El Capitan.

Unconscious, thoroughly bundled and tied around their middles, they hang dead-weight midway between the roof and the stage.

In the second of stunned silence that will always follow such a sudden terror, however much they might have been expecting it, a Perspex-platformed pump slips off Columbina's foot and hits the floor below with an enormous hollow thunk.

Doc and Merritt are the first to lose their composure again, unless you count the single clap of Jack and Lula's high-five echoing down from the catwalk. But really there isn't much in it; relief as much as amusement leaves them all shaking in moments, Petey so paralysed Quinn has to help him up so he can finish opening Henley's shackles. Now that he's not pretending anymore it doesn't take him long. In fact, aside from Rebecca and Pantalone, and Valerie who is not his own and can't just now, Danny is the only one not smiling.

Danny hasn't gotten up yet. Still spread out, still trying to protect Henley. She's asked him to move a couple of times now but, still a little breathless herself, hasn't pushed it. It's only when Petey comes to that last wrist, and Danny still doesn't move, that they realize something is wrong. Both feet free, Henley rolls over on her side, closer. Her one loose hand curls around his head, lifting it. It's only then she sees the real, true fear still lingering on his face, the incomprehension, begging to know why they aren't both dead, why everyone is laughing.

Quinn sees it too and crumbles. Hanging on the edge of the blessedly-bloodless table, "Oh my God, he didn't know. He never looked up, he didn't see them."

Petey has to physically lift him away to get at the cuff. He puts him carefully on the floor, leaning against the table leg, to recover.


	64. Chapter 64

"You could have said something."

"Danny, I was gagged."

"No, but you could have-"

"Not without tipping Rebecca off. Besides, I thought you'd seen them. Anybody else with half a brain had seen them." This is no sooner spoken than Henley winces. Kneeling on the floor by Danny, you'd be forgiven for thinking he was the one who really was facing death until just a few minutes ago. He can't be comforted. Even an accidental, unmeant insult to his intelligence is too much on top of his existing injuries, pushes him backward. Not ideal, when it took her a while to get him to stop hyperventilating in the first place.

Up above them, the clowns are making a little pile on the table. Emptying their pockets, pulling items from shoes and hats and who knows where else, gathering a dozen or so little items. When they're sure they've got it all, Petey cups his hands and Quinn scrapes the pile off the table into them. Both crouching, they make an offering of the stuff to Henley.

A half-empty tube of superglue, rubber bands, gum, paperclips, safety pins. "What is this?"

"That's what _we_ use when we break something."

They're so earnest, so wide-eyed and sweet, that there's a slight delay before Henley waves them off. "He's not broken. Are you, Danny?"

Eyes shut, he pretends he's not still shaking – or if he is that it's only from anger – and says through gritted teeth, "Obviously I'm not broken." And yet when Petey takes his arm to help him up he turns fierce, like he's only just noticed the towering clown, "You. You could have told me something. Or just undone the cuffs. Henley would have been safe, they could have dropped the blade if they wanted, who'd care? What was the point of that?"

Petey stands back. He considers signing, hands starting to form words Quinn begins to read but, ultimately, he finds a better way to say it. They both, as one, perform a little two-footed hop, landing with an open-mouthed grin and both hands stuck out to the sides, fluttering. " _Ssshowmanship_!", and they circle each other in Charleston steps, to music they don't need anybody else to hear.

They stop dead when Dylan calls across the stage, "No, actually." He's keeping an eye on Rebecca while Merritt uses Valerie, still in thrall, to move Pantalone. He does not, therefore, see just how sudden the stop was, doesn't see Petey wobbling as he tries to stay on the ball of one foot. Doesn't see Henley's hand quietly reach up to support him at the other knee. "Well, yes-" and with a nod Petey and Quinn each take another step, careful to get both feet on the floor before, "But only incidentally. Mostly we did it to demonstrate, to any clown that might have thought otherwise, the difference between knowing and judging. You've made your lives, your whole organization, out of the belief that knowledge is power. Passing judgement, then, is an abuse of that power. Particularly if you then do away with anyone who _disagrees_ with your judgement." Stopping Valerie for a moment, Dylan leans in closer to Pantalone, "Sound like anyone you know?"

"No one springs to mind." That bitter mutter must be all he has left. Hard to tell, when he moves off again, if Valerie is even still having to push him.

Doc glances away from watching his beloved children dance. "Not a bad speech. Could have used a joke or two, but not too shabby all over."

"I'm not done yet. I haven't yet pointed out what I proved to _you_ , _Dottore_." You ought to see Dylan just now. See him, and make up your own mind whether he's really getting into the swing of things, or is mildly hysterical from the unquestionable suffering of the last few weeks. "I proved you don't have to know a damn _thing_ and you can still come out on top." Calling up to the catwalk "Good thinking, guys!"

No immediate answer; Jack and Lula seem to have slipped away into the dark somewhere. It's fine, he can give them all the time they need. They deserve to recover after such quick and effective work. Besides, Dylan has just unwittingly wakened a problem down on his own level.

Danny is steady now alright. Danny's never been steadier, comes stalking toward him like the night may yet hold the possibility of a fight. "Wait. Just _wait_. Are you telling me _you_ didn't know about that either?"

"Ah, a little. Knew before we walked in here that they'd be taken, that's why Doc and Petey hung back until they weren't expected, and I knew they'd do _something_ with it, but the details? I saw them when Henley did."

"How can you stand there and _admit_ -?!"

"I know, right? Is there a worse feeling? Can you think of one? Does anything hurt more than being left so far out of the loop you wouldn't know where to _begin_ helping the people you care about?" Danny is at the edge of his next sentence before he realizes this is aimed at him. Once he sees that, he runs out of arguments. He stands floundering until Dylan takes pity. "If you want to, you can walk back the way you came, and I'll turn around again, and it'll be like we never did this."

"…Yeah, okay."

It's at this, hearing that Dylan is about to turn back to her and keep a better watch, that Rebecca decides it's now or never. She's up from her knees in a blink and bolts out into the dark of the wings. More than one of them moves to follow her, but more than one of them is passed by the head-down blur of Quinn, half-jumping and half-thrown out of a complex Lindy lift and racing after its one-time mistress, the holder of the leash. Rebecca doesn't get far.

No one sees what happens but they hear the crash. They hear the scream that follows and all the little yelps. When the pair come back into the light, Rebecca is bent almost double, scuttling to keep up with the fistful of hair Quinn is dragging.

"Now you listen to me, Jabba the Sl-"

"Language, Arlechinno!"

"Sorry, Mom. Just telling Holly Gofrightly here that she ain't no stepmom of mine." As it passes Petey, it sticks out one hand. Its partner provides the rubber chicken that held it silent so long. The other hand releases Rebecca's hair but shoves her hard, so she staggers backward toward the edge of the stage. Now, there are few outside the circus fraternity who know this, but a rubber chicken, swung hard enough, due to its texture and strange weight distribution, will leave quite a nasty bruise. Rebecca learns this an especially hard way. Tomorrow morning she won't have to paint any unusual colours onto her face. "You could say 'knock knock', and I'd say, 'Quick, Petey, shut the lights off and we'll hide in the kitchen'." Another brutal chicken swing, "You say 'doctor doctor' and I'll make sure you leave needing one." One last swing. This one doesn't connect, but it isn't meant to. It passes an inch from Rebecca's face and when she rears back to avoid it, she goes tumbling over the footlights into the front row. "Becky, sweetheart, babydoll, smile of my soul, on that far-distant day when I run out of 'yo mama' gags, I'ma just compare people to you."

A spatter of applause, cheers from Petey and Henley and from Jack, wherever he is, a long whistle. But Quinn isn't done. It's not a matter of hogging a spotlight; it isn't even aware that it has one. It's just that it has started now and the Horsemen had laughter to fall back on, to finally spell out their relief. Quinn's had laughter all along and now it wants to yell, it wants to inflict. Pantalone should really know better than to laugh. He just draws attention to himself.

Quinn draws breath, and deep.

But before it can begin, Petey is there with it. One hand on the little shoulder, pulling it back, the other indicating himself. "Oh, you want this one?" A solemn nod. "You need me to translate?"

 _Not needed._ _Quinn can relax now_.

"Oh… _Oh_. Oh, where's Wilder? _Wilder_! He needs to see this."

Appearing back at the catwalk rail, "See what?"

"Just watch."

By now, Petey is over the edge of the stage. Something easy and fluid about him now, forgetting the amiable lumber of his practiced walk. No ballet in this but no less graceful, and there is a sort of grudging respect in the way he approaches his former father. Valerie had just brought Pantalone to the edge of the aisle. They were waiting there while Merritt drew back the wheelchair and fished out the handcuffs hidden underneath; a simple but effective method of transport for a potentially violent prisoner. Now that has all stopped, a sort of tableau into which Petey walks with his hands together, up in front of his chest as if he might recite bible verses. One hand balled up, under the cover of the other…

Once or twice his mouth opens, only to close again in silence, regretting the words he might have used in another life. At the end of these invisible speeches he seems to change his mind. He turns away and Pantalone, who had been remarkably poised, seemed ready to take whatever was coming, resigns himself to the chair again.

He's almost in position when Petey spins back. The covering hand is gone so there's only the fist, and in all of Petey's world there is only Pantalone's jaw. Accuracy isn't a problem when there's only one thing in the world. Power isn't either, when the only sentiment you want to express is the bottomless pain of betrayal by someone you once so blindly trusted.

Resignation stops being a problem for Pantalone. Maybe he was biding his time, waiting for a better moment, but not anymore. The lights are out before he even lands in the chair.

For the record, look up above the stage and Jack is gone again. It might have remained a secret whether he had to go or whether he ran, couldn't watch, had to hide. Might have, except for Lula cackling, "That's why he didn't hit you back! You would have been _paste_ , man, he would have _killed_ you."

Dylan and Doc are there to pull Rebecca out of the stalls. She struggles but pointlessly; they put her down in the unconscious Pantalone's lap and, hand and foot, cuff her to the chair. "There's a joke there," Dylan says as they stand back, surveying their work, "About her being stuck with him now after saying she never wanted him… I can't phrase it, though."

"Sometimes you just have to leave the words out," Doc smiles, "And just look at a beautifully funny thing."

It takes more than a little effort for Merritt to pull back the chair now, but he tries anyway. "Where do you want them?"

"Oh, don't bother; the kids will take care of that. Petey, Quinn!" They appear at Doc's side so fast they wobble like springs. Quinn salutes. Petey looks as if he'd like to, but he's clutching the hand that threw the punch and clearly in some pain. "Take these two back to the Big Top. Avoid questions, main thoroughfares and do _not_ stop for ice cream this time. Do I have to repeat that?"

"No, sir," and Petey swings his head. They take a handle each from Merritt and turn the chair. And yes, Rebecca does a certain amount of screaming as they push her up the aisle, but neither of them seems to hear it anymore. "Can we even get back to the house on foot?", the light little discussion as they vanish, both still dancing a little, "Because I'm not pushing this thing onto a vaporetto. I'll get arrested again. Twice in a week, Petey, that's not a record I'm looking to set…"

The main door swings shut behind them and Merritt asks, "When did they stop for ice cream?"

"Every time I have asked them to do anything, ever. They'll do it tonight. It hardly seems their fault anymore, some sort of compulsion. Was that nice, by the way, Mr McKinney?" At the furrowing of Merritt's brow, "Asking a question with absolutely _nothing_ riding on the answer."

"Y'know what? It kinda was."

Is that it? Is that an end? A rosy sunset, the cute squabbling of the _kids_ as they all too cleanly remove the villains from the piece, is that enough? This is the thinking that puts a terrible weight in the back of Dylan's skull, that clanks against the brass shell of a footlight when he knocks his head back against it. Grudging, hating himself for it even as he speaks, "Wait."

The wheelchair stops moving. Petey turns to see what he wants, losing hold of his handle in the process. The weight threatens to roll back down the aisle, to roll right over Quinn if necessary, and there's some delay, some fluster, while it yelps and they correct themselves and the brakes. Enough time for others to have wondered, to have waited for Dylan to have said something more. And, since he hasn't, they have come to get a closer look.

It's Danny and Henley, sitting at the edge of the stage who catch his drift even as Dylan is still struggling to swim against the current.

"Oh no," Henley breathes.

And Danny tries pointing at the doors, at the perplexed messengers, "Guys, go! Get out before he says it."

"That's his law enforcement face. I've never seen him not-faking-it before, but that's definitely it."

"I can't-" Dylan mutters. He knows the rest of the sentence but doesn't like it. He grits his teeth. From far above Jack is yelling that he can just stop there. Whatever way clowns have of handling trouble-makers is way better than what he's about to suggest. It's probably true. Lula, so lately granted oracle status, concurs.

But Dylan turns to Doc, "I'm sorry, but there's a way things are done. I can't just let you vanish them. I don't know how your kind deal with these things but I'm pretty sure it doesn't involve due process and-"

"We got our own processes," Quinn declares, "and way past due." It's Petey's turn to struggle with the sudden weight of the wheelchair; Quinn comes charging down the aisle, pointing, mouth open, ready for more.

But Doc puts out a hand behind him. "I quite understand, Mr Shrike. Really I do. But, as hot young blood so passionately put it, we have our own ways. My kids deserve a result as much as yours do, notwithstanding I myself have a powerful need to make an example of treachery. If I can't get my organization back in line soon, the schism might never heal."

"Also it's really not fair if Petey gets to hit him and I don't."

"Quinn-"

"What can you guys even _tell_ the cops anyway? You're more wanted than all us put together, and Cap up there, he started a war one time. No, it's too dangerous. We better hold on to Panty for you until you're out of the country. Call us when you're clear. We'll pick up, I swear, we won't block all your numbers the second you're out of the room."

" _Arlechinno!_ " and it quails. A deep, steadying breath and Doc tells it, "Wait outside."

"But _Mom-_!"

By glares and fidgets they argue on in silence, until with one last flare Quinn gives in and storms back to Petey, past him into the lobby. Doc watches it go. Then, cautious and testing, pretending this has only just occurred to him, "For all its vehemence, it raises a good point…"

"Then why'd you send it out?"

"Because I'm about to make an offer. And since the only guarantee I can give is my word, and I can surmise how you might feel about the word of a clown, a little delicacy may be required, rather than vehemence."

"So what are you so delicately suggesting?"

"Allow me custody of Miss Dasko and my former partner overnight, and you'll have a front row seat for a perfectly legitimate arrest before noon tomorrow."

"I've got your word on that?"

"If I had more, I'd give it."

"No… No, your word's enough. It's enough."

* * *

[A/N - at my very sweet guest - thank _you,_ bunny, for sticking with it this long. I think I'll be taking a long break after this, but I do still want to do something/lots with Allen Scott-Frank ;) ]


	65. Chapter 65

"So does he do that hand thing, the angle thing, with the tapping?"

"They all do that. All magicians do that."

"I don't."

"All _male_ magicians. I lived with them, remember. I lived with them for a year."

"Yeah, okay, but then do you know what it is? The tapping thing? Like they're typing air?"

"Not a clue. And believe me, I spent _days_ of my life trying to figure it out, but you just have to accept it, it's a thing, they do it, let it go."

"But it's so _annoying_."

Introducing Henley to Lula seemed at first redundant – if your first shared glance is across twelve or so vertical feet and one of you is potentially saving the other's life, surely you can consider yourselves introduced? – and then heart-warming. Charming to see them in one room, a reunion of sorts, for people who had never met, two generations to have filled one post, and how nice that this is the most complete they could all be as a team and…

And things didn't stay heart-warming all that long. Merritt and Dylan lagged way behind, but Jack saw it coming miles away, and by then Danny was already trying to find some way to separate them. It took no time at all for those latter two to become a persistent and not entirely positive topic of conversation. They both know it's petty. Given what they've faced lately, it's downright cruel to begrudge Henley and Lula the smiles on their faces. Nonetheless they must be stopped.

Trouble is, there's nothing to stop them. Nothing is happening.

To repeat, so that you can be sure, nothing is happening.

The absolute nothing, the impossibility of interrupting them, gets to be such an urgent irritation that Jack and Danny find themselves standing apart from the others, hidden in the kitchen. Danny has a glass in his hand. More than once Jack has found himself glancing down at it, and can see from the press and twitch of his hands – what, by the way, is the tapping thing?, what is that they both do with their hands which is so annoying? – that Danny is thinking about it too.

A harmony of stifled giggles from the other room and it happens on a heartbeat; Danny's hand swipes sideways, smashing the glass between the counter and his palm. Just his luck that most of the shards and shatter fall harmlessly to the ground. Only one, and it is a measly, blunt little thing he can scarcely even feel, sticks in his palm. That anyone takes it at all seriously, he has Jack to thank; "Oh, God, man, that looks bad. Here, let me see-"

Enough talk, and loud enough, it draws Henley fast. Lula is a step or two behind, just enough of a gap for Jack to step in and intercept her, to turn her around and let one pair go one way, and the other another.

"It's fine," he tells Lula, when she's worried, when she's looking for an explanation, "He's not even bleeding. Heavily."

That's it. A broken glass, a two-inch cut, that's as eventful as it gets. Dylan keeps repeating it to himself, looking around with the wide-eyed hyperawareness of a man who thinks there might be a mouse in the house and is tuned into every little scratch, every noise that could even _possibly_ be a squeak. Every so often the facts creep up on him and try again to sink in, with a comforting smile, a shake of his shoulder, checking if he's willing to accept yet – isn't this a wonderful thing? Nothing is happening.

Il Dottore was good enough to provide a safe house along with his promises. Until those are kept – and the clown's word is not so strong a bond that Dylan's not sticking around to see it done – they can't leave Venice, and even the Eye would have needed an hour or two to arrange their escape anyway.

There was no problem finding the place. It's fully stocked. There are enough beds, though no one has so far gotten out of earshot of the rest, except for showers, which there are also enough of. They haven't needed anything and found it missing, nothing has made itself awkward. The safe house is bland and unassuming, free from trapdoors. The handle on the front door was not equipped with an electric buzzer.

…Isn't it _wonderful_?

There's something surreal about it. Like a carnival ride stopping too suddenly, you get off still spinning, dancing seasick steps, the world still turning faster than you are.

Crossing the theatre lobby was the hardest part. Drifting and quiet, thick carpet softening their steps in the dark, just being all together again was strange. They left everything that happened on that stage behind him like any other show. A sensation of something having happened _around_ them, rather than to them. Call it shock. Say it'll sink in along with the aches and their memories will develop in vivid colour as the bruises do. Call it disbelief, that days which went on so long and so often seemed hopeless, unwinnable, could actually be at an end.

Dylan catches himself taking a headcount under his breath and it's not the first time. Not the first time, when Henley loses interest in Danny's mortal wound and comes by, that Merritt has pulled somebody towards him to inspect a scratch. This one is real, a little graze just below her ear, but others have been imagined. Checking them all for marks, or maybe for cracks, in case someone should just suddenly shatter along the fault lines.

But the glass is the only thing, so far, to shatter. There's a silence that goes the same way when Lula gets a text, but that hardly counts, does it?

"Petey says if we need anything to tell him; they'll come by later but they're sort of wrapped up with… clown justice."

She comes to sit at the other end of the couch to Dylan. So as not to crowd them Jack sits by her feet, leaning his head against her knee. "Why do I get the feeling that doesn't involve custard pies?"

"More likely tar and feathers," Merritt mutters.

"I could ask him?"

Hard to say how many of them answer Lula but more than one voice bites out, "No!" It's instinctive. Nobody could articulate _why_ they're so sure they don't want to know. But they're sure. They're very, very sure.

That pretty much kills off that one little spark of conversation. But just the sound of the voices, starting to feel reality creep back in at the edges, Dylan brings them as close they're going to get to anything happening. All around him, they are oblivious, unawares. They're hanging on the edge of a howling void and they don't even know it. It's just that there's this little nagging voice right at the back of Dylan's mind. It's been flickering on and off in the hours since the theatre, catching light every time certain people attract his attention. This flash of arrogance, that ironic laugh, the off-putting, twitchy little tap of unthinking fingers, the oddest things have been dancing him closer and closer to the edge.

He's definitely not going to _yell_ at anyone, okay? He'd like that to be known. For one, he hasn't the energy. But a couple of quiet conversations in other rooms might be called for? It seems like the righteous, leaderly thing to do? His uncertainties around it could just be the usual reluctance to impose, asking himself if it's really his place to correct them at all. Could be unwillingness to wreck what has so far been a perfectly smooth night. The last of Dylan's troubles died with yesterday's sun, swallowed up by the lagoon into darkness, and here he sits, gradually talking himself into starting some fresh ones.

But they've hurt each other lately, and on more than one occasion. They've tripped each other up. And it's not just mistakes to highlight and iron out, he's got apologies to make too. It wouldn't take long, it wouldn't hurt anybody…

 _No_ , he tells himself. _No._ _Hell has stopped._ _No one is on fire, everybody is in one piece, none of the pieces are in cells of any kind._ _Take the win_.

Yeah, but still-

 _Take._ _The._ _Win._

Blessedly, he never finally resolves to drive their peaceful evening off that particular cliff. Maybe his gentle heart gets the better of him.

Or maybe it's late and he's very, _very_ tired, _days-_ worth of tired and all at once, and it crushes him out of consciousness long before he could ever rouse himself enough to hold a double-edged conversation. It's a while before anyone even notices. Danny's the only one to acknowledge it out loud, "Everybody knows what he was going to say anyway, right?"

Vague assent, a tangle of hums and mutters, and one light snore from Jack which may be read as a 'yes' if you really need to know everybody agrees.

"And just for anybody having any dangerous thoughts-" Merritt adds, after a moment's quiet, "- He was way ahead on what we all would have said back, alright? So there's no need for anybody to say anything."

"Why are you looking at _me_?"

But Henley doesn't stay offended long. "He's not." Danny doesn't take his eyes off her fingertips, broken nails exploring around his cut palm, "He means me, but I'm ignoring him, because it's unnecessary and I'm not awake enough to get into being offended..."

No one leaves that room. It's been said, there are more than enough beds in the place, but no one moves. Lethargy is only part of it. As casual as they might seem – Danny and Henley piled on a second couch, Merritt sprawled in the armchair like an immovable Christmas Eve uncle – they resemble nothing so much as the crew of a wrecked ship, clinging to one lifeboat and to each other. They'd never admit it, they'd argue with you if you put it to them, but just for tonight, each one of them is afraid to let the others out of their sight.

Lula clings harder than most. Sleeplessness is natural to her anyway, the weird haze in the dark that makes hours simultaneously drag and vanish, brings morning in the blink of an eye along with the painful knowledge that you wasted all that time unable to so much as rest. Tonight it's easier than ever to find herself there. Twitching away every time the dark gets too close, eyes rushing around the room, making sure it's all real, all still the same, everyone is here.

She's the only one still in the room when there's a faint scratching at the door. This itself is barely audible, could be dismissed – the shuffling that follows, however, the sound of a shoulder colliding with softer flesh, a foot slipping, that's harder to ignore. The scuffle ends with the light thunk of one half stumbling against the door, strong and quick enough to hold back from a wakening thud. "Will you be quiet?!" This hissing voice belongs to Quinn. That's all Lula needs to know. She sinks with perfect ease back to where things, if slow, frustrating, are at least hazy and warm. "They're probably all sleeping. Didn't you just tell me all you want to do is sleep? All _I_ want to do is sleep. What makes you think they wouldn't be asleep?... Oh, I did not shove you, I am not physically capable of shoving you."

Somewhere in the midst of all this, the key catches in the lock, and the hiss gets marginally louder. "Don't do that. Don't denigrate my grouchiness. It is not _just_ because I'm tired, there are a lot of massively valid reasons for my grouchiness. If I wasn't grouchy right now, I'd check me in somewhere. I'd get me seen to."

They shuffle in, missing the Horsemen at first. They're busy with a wooden crate, carried between them. Their height difference lends it a precarious slant, and here and there the indistinct contents threaten to spill over, but nothing hits the floor.

It's the sight of Petey trying to shut the door with his foot that makes Lula giggle.

A genuine start, a moment's hesitation. Then, as far as the crate will allow, both begin at once to wiggle their fingers, to gently sway, and Quinn's voice sways too, "Ignore us… pay no attention to the dream behind the curtain… go back to sleep… except you're asleep anyway, because this is a dream… go with that, you're doing great…"

"Guys, it's okay. What's in that box, though? It stinks."

She doesn't get an answer out of them, just draws their attention back to it. By shuffles and pivots it is given entirely to Petey. He takes it away to a safe distance, to be put beyond the screen of a balcony door. Quinn crouches by the arm of the couch, "You guys know there's bedrooms, right?"

"Yeah, I… We just…"

Skipping these half-questions too, "How is everybody? We know we've been terrible hosts, we got here as soon as we could. Actually, tell me in the morning. You rest up and we'll wake you for breakfast. We owe you breakfast, from way back."

At this, finally, Lula's got a whole and complete answer to give. Looking drowsy up over Quinn's shoulder, at Petey coming back, she smiles, "No you don't."

"…What's this? Private gags? You two got something going on?" But the exit is already in progress. Quick, whispered patter seeing them out, "She's unavailable, big guy. Anyway, you know you're unbearable. Drove _me_ crazy, didn't you? You remember what happened last time, don't you? That last girl? When she left, and I had to take you to the zoo? Remember I had to drag you out when they wanted to close the joint? _Penguins have never hurt me_ , that's all I could get out of you." He's a step ahead, and on the next step changes his walk for a rocking waddle, hands turned out. By the time Quinn has taken the step to match, it has made similar corrections. They roll together out of the room with soft and strangely comforting quacks.

Once or twice, getting softer, Lula echoes. With that in her head and the fingers of one hand trailing through Jack's hair, something deep and dreaming is able to wind through her and draw her down to it. For the first time in a while there's no fire in the dark.

* * *

[A/N again - to friend K, I'm glad you've had a good time, and thanks for sticking with us. Just one more little spot of silly wrap-up to go, I'm afraid. Much love ;)]


	66. Chapter 66

Dylan's not aware of waking, exactly. One minute he's not there and the next Merritt is speaking to him. He's already sitting straighter, rolling the crick of a long night out of his neck. He's got a message, but he knows this as if he read it in his sleep, and slips his phone out to be sure he didn't dream it. But it turns out to be real, even down to the content. Nothing important, no need to worry about the details now, but trust him, it's good news.

A strange sensation, yes, but he's grateful for it. There's none of that foggy halfway stage, nowhere he might convince himself that the dreams he's shaking off might stretch back further than he thinks, might bracket in the events of last night, maybe even the last couple of weeks. This way, he comes round without any room for doubt. It's mean. It would be meaner yet if things hadn't gone their way.

But he's missed something, missed some line before, because the first he hears from Merritt, "Have to hand it to you, that was pretty impressive."

"…What was?"

"Last night. You turning out all brave and fearless. I wouldn't get up that close to grab a gun off of anybody, not to mention the size of that creep, and a clown to boot."

"You can drop the last part."

"See, that's what I mean. Used to be that mattered but then when it _counted_ -"

" _You_ did that."

"Thought you said it wouldn't work on you?"

Well, he did. And any other day, it wouldn't. He's trained himself against all that. Particularly after the other McKinney made himself known, after that he made sure to refresh on all the old techniques and learn some more advanced ones. It's a matter of personal safety. It's a matter of _pride_ , in fact, that Dylan should be able to go amongst them and maintain calm, to stay a half-step ahead and above. But obviously it worked last night. They all saw how it worked.

If you have to have an explanation for it, say it worked because Dylan needed it to.

He's been quiet too long; it's given Merritt time to _think_ , of all the dangerous things he might have done, to furrow up his brow and add, "At least, I _hope_ it wasn't me. That would have worn off by now and, well…"

"Well what? Merritt? What's happened, where are they?"

"It's probably nothing to worry about. They were up all night giving evidence, so they're not at their best, but all the same, I thought it might be best to see how you feel about-"

Something moves at the edge of Dylan's vision. In a flash of panic his head snaps round. But he calms just as quickly; it's only Petey, standing square in the kitchen doorway. He glares at Merritt, hands flashing. It's the mentalist who slowly reads, " _Told you to leave him alone._ _Freaked him out."_

 _He'll be fine._ _No jokes now; breakfast is serious business._ "

Now that it's been mentioned, Dylan can suddenly smell it, something sweet and overwhelming, something that takes him back to Paris. All the way awake now, "Breakfast?" Two thumbs up needs no translation; Dylan's across the room almost before Petey is out of the doorway. There he finds the larger of the clowns folding himself up between the oven door and the centre island, the intent gaze of some great white bird watching chicks hatch inside, and Danny drinking coffee. Quinn sits perched on a stool at the far end of the island. Henley is painstakingly pencilling its face, restoring the red diamonds that were so cruelly stolen from over its eye. She's just repositioning herself, just about to start on the last of them, when Quinn mutters, "Wait? Aren't you done? It's only supposed to be three."

Henley grabs the peak of its cap. "Hold still. Used to be three. You levelled up. Morning, Dylan."

Not a beat missed, and no acknowledgement whatever of Quinn's sudden glow, Dylan hardly realizes she addressed him until Quinn picks it up, "Morning, Mr Shrike."

"Morning, ladies. Morning, Arlechinno."

Danny flinches. The clowns applaud, bay laughter, until Petey straightens up, hands held out, _Hold on_. Faster signing; Quinn stays perfectly still but watches his reflection in the window, " _Who are you and what have you done with the real guy?_ Old gag, Petey… He says it's not a gag, he's really worried."

"I don't know why he's saying anything when his madeleines are ready."

Petey drops back down, snatches the oven open with a clatter, misjudges the door and knocks himself over. Quinn pushes Henley's hand away and hangs off its chair, asking it's partner, "Did you set that up? Something I didn't see? He didn't do that on his own." No specifics, because he's cradling his ribs, but Petey shakes his head. The smaller head flips up, "Okay, not a gag, what have you done with the real one? Are you hypnotised? If so, are you hypnotised _right_? I ain't going in any more canals, man."

This much goes by ignored. Not, however, out of spite like it might have been when first they met, just out of an innate sense that that's an appropriate place to drop off, to let the bit change before it gets tired. You might even call it comic timing, though maybe not in front of Dylan just yet. Give him a little time. It's just the right moment to leave the clowns conferring in whispers about brainwave scramblers and potential body-snatcher situations. Together, one hand each on the rim, they push him a plate, and flinch when he takes it. Mirroring every time they ever repulsed him, but it is thankfully false. The joyful, secretive high-five, each winding an arm behind their back, that's genuine.

It ought not make Dylan proud of himself. He tries to pretend his warm surprise is purely because the madeleine have turned out pretty well, and not because he isn't checking them for soap flakes or chilli powder. Petey says breakfast is sacred, so it must be.

Dylan has his eye on another madeleine, with a slightly caught edge, dark and crisp, too much batter in the pan, a gold-brown frill. Danny snags it not a second before he's ready for it. To hide his displeasure, to let the tension ease, "Where are Jack and L…" But even such a simple question fails him. Shaking his head, "Answered myself, didn't I?"

This, finally, is too much for Petey. His doubts coalesce in one final, definite shake of the head, underlined by a swiping arm. _No, no way, not right_ , and he adds to these denials, _Getting out of here_. He stumbles on his first fearful step, backward, always with eyes fixed on Dylan. Warily pointing to Danny and Henley, _You guys be okay?_

With a terse little smile, "We're used to him." Danny is, for the record, leaving a little scatter of dark brown crumbs on a saucer, muttering about 'burnt bits' while he picks them off. "Anyway, he's wrong."

Quinn quails as if Dylan might react poorly to such news, then darts back to grab food, then lets Petey drag it away to safety. All an act, though, obviously. Listen close and you'll hear it break character to mutter, "Come on, I want to snag those apples, the brown ones, with the worms."

Dylan could ask about that. He wants to, very much. But, more pressing, "How is it I'm wrong? You expect me to believe, that those two vanish, together, after what happened last night, and -?"

"For once, yes. Though they _are_ upstairs."

And Dylan is nodding, showing open hands, _There you go, then_. Not taking after Petey all of a sudden, just struggling to find words that don't come across like 'I told you so', 'of course I'm right', 'adorably predictable'. Henley cuts through him, and through a mouthful of breakfast, "Not a euphemism. Upstairs, on the back balcony, the one over the water? Best position and only room for the two of them." Lips pursed, rueful, but she gives up fast on blaming herself and thumps Danny's arm, blaming him instead, "If you'd have gotten up earlier, I wouldn't have been pinned to that couch-"

"Will you stop? I already apologized. And besides, those two, after what they've-"

"Don't tell me what they've been through; how long were we locked in that stupid maze? I could have been cut in half."

"Lula nearly burned alive."

"So what? She gets _all_ of the tomatoes, every last one? What does she even throw like? Her arms look skinny."

"Didn't you get those potatoes you liked? The whole bag? You liked the weight of them, you said, and they're practically liquid. I don't even know what you're complaining about anymore."

In desperation, and not knowing what he thinks of how quickly they start squabbling again any time they get together, Dylan calls out, "Stop!" Too loud, too sudden, he gets stunned silence to ask, " _What_?!"

The bickering dies fast too. Unite them, even for a moment, even to laugh at him, and it's over. They only fight each other and only when there's no other fight to be had. So in perfect harmony, finishing each other's sentences, a little sickening actually, they tell him to go through to the back. To 'follow his nose', which seems an odd phrase. Go the way Petey and Quinn did, they'll explain. This is Doc holding up his end of the bargain. There's not much left. Even Petey only got these couple of hard, shrivelled oranges, they might not even split. All the upstairs windows that face the canal have been called. Merritt's got the one on the corner, there might still be space there if Dylan's nice.

If you'd told him a week ago that he'd soon go looking for clowns in search of a reasonable explanation…

But he learns pretty quick, there was truth in what sounded like madness. Once he gets away from the scent of baking, there's a stench up ahead far worse than the swamp, the sort of sweet, rotten smell that knocks cogent thought for six. It has not deterred Quinn, though. In fact, the little clown has its little nose right in the trough, making careful, conoisseur's selections from a splinter-sided crate of rotten fruit and vegetables. Picking over spoiled-velvet peaches, gauging their weight. "No," Dylan mutters. "You're kidding."

"Uh-uh."

"I'll catch you later."

"No-no-no-no-no," it scuttles across the floor and drags him back, "There is no later, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I've been doing this six years and we've never even got close to a shaming."

"It's supposed to be an arrest."

Left arm pointing, "That end of the canal, arrest," and a snaking wave to the tip of the right index finger, "That end of the canal, old-fashioned actual proper justice you can see and believe in."

"Have fun. But I don't want any part of this. I'm-"

"What, too grown-up? Since last night? Sure thing, Shrike, wait'll the hypnosis wears off. Now come on, or you'll never forgive yourself. I left you that cabbage. This was incredibly generous of me. It's perfect except it's too big for my hands, so you can have it."

 _Leave_. It shouldn't be this difficult. Dylan's out in the hall already, it's a matter of two steps more and he won't be able to see, the smell will help push him away and knowing he's done the right thing will pull him onward. But he stands, an ugly stuck moment, biting hard at the inside of his lip. His next steps are sharp and fast – how much of three minutes has he wasted already? – and take him to the window.

Up on the corner, he can just see leaning on the balcony rail, Merritt is already in position on the corner. He's got a torn half carton of eggs. A window further along – it really is the best position – Jack has the other half, and Lula her contentious horde of oozing, grotesque tomatoes. She's overheard his concerns and leans out, feet off the ground, rocking. Whining, " _Stay_ , come _on_."

Compelling argument.

Quinn laughs when she sticks out her tongue. "By the way, and I am uncharacteristically serious about this, if anything ever happens with her and the magic goes out of the relationship, she can come to us."

"I think you're wrong - "

"No, really. My Mom totally said so, she can have my room."

" - I think you're nearly always serious."

Hard to say that, hard to hear himself say it, when Quinn is crouched down, when it's picking up his foot and putting it on the corner of the crate. But he says it, means it, and takes the cue to hold the box down. The boards might be old and cracked but it still takes all the strength of Quinn's shoulders to pull one off the longer side. Or maybe it doesn't and it would just be bad form to pass up the gag, straining, groaning, falling back when the wood comes loose. The possibility doesn't bother him the way it used to. It could be referring to these past doubts of his just as much as what he just said when it grins, "You keep your secrets and I'll keep mine."

He helps when, after peering out and carefully assessing the danger, it climbs out the window onto the railed-in ledge. It rattles the fencing before it really settles. By the time its pristine new glove stretches out blind to pick up a rotten brown apple, Dylan's already got the one it's reaching for.

Hard to say exactly what game Quinn is playing, but it tugs its cap straight and yells, "Pull!" He tosses the apple high; the only reason it doesn't explode on impact with the swinging board is that Quinn catches it from underneath, sending it sailing a beautiful arc down the canal.

Now obviously the first cheer comes from the clown itself.

The second comes from Petey, clapping like a seal. He's not in the house anymore, but on along the water. From the way he darts back from congratulating his partner, he's keeping watch down there, presumably for the coming prisoner.

Loath as he may be to admit it, Dylan is starting to see how clown justice works. There's no denying this is silly. Then again, he has no doubt that there is more and worse waiting for Pantalone later on, and wouldn't like to guess what's happened to him in the course of the night. So yes, fine, this is silly. But look around. Look at all these wronged, brutalised parties and look at the effect even this silliest of retributions has on them. Look up at two potato-stained hands hanging down against wrought iron, woven together. You miss the joke, this far below, but you hear the laughing.

In all of this only Quinn's grin has faded a little. It looked up when Dylan did but has yet to take its eyes off Danny. "I should have told him," it grumbles. "All of you really, but him especially…"

"Told us what?"

"Becky Badclown slipped the noose. About four this morning we heard the boat. It's no big deal; last we heard she was at the airport headed back to the states. We'll have people on the runway at the far end, I promise."

"No need." That was the message he picked up on waking. "Interpol got her at Departures."

"Hm… Whatever could _Interpol_ want with _her_?" Clipped, sing-song syllables, the robotic parody of somebody lying badly, "What a happy coincidence."

"What are you implying?"

"Nothing, nothing." Quinn might say more, but its watch bleeps a little alarm. It changes, all electric again, all excitement, "Will you grab that cabbage I left you? The lack of gratitude is killing me." Not enough to hold its attention, though; it looks to Petey and gets a wide wave, a thumbs-up. Mere moments later, a slow moving boat drifts onto the canal, turning gently. For a moment, it edges close to the walkway and Petey, and the grateful son helps his pilot-Mom over to dry (damp) land.

And if you listen very closely, and you know what they sound like – you may know them by the static of walkie-talkies or the idling motors of their transport – the promised police are out on the bigger river at the other end, looking but not seeing yet. Promise kept, it seems. In light of that, what could be the harm in…?

There's time for guilt to surface one last time, time for Dylan's better self to ask again, _Really? We're really doing this?_

One foot each, Doc and Petey shove the boat back to the middle of the stream. Still creeping that funeral pace, out of the shade, where early light turns the water milky turquoise. Riding in the prow, tied hand and foot and everywhere in between, Pantalone has had the colours removed from the caked and crackling layers of his white greasepaint. There's no describing how easily Dylan can visualize tomato splatter painting him orange, spreading vein-like down every wrinkle.

Dylan isn't someone who has to really claw his way up to the moral high ground. Most days, the ascent doesn't give him much trouble.

In short, he can have compunctions any old day. This, on the other hand, is once in a lifetime, and in his lifetime up until now has been devoutly wished more than once.

In shorter, he leans down to scoop up the cabbage.

* * *

[A/N - Friends, neighbours and Horsemen, it's been a trip, but I'm all done now :) Much love, and thanks for being around all this time,

C.J.]


End file.
